Fran & Rich's Big Happy Trip: Nha Trang-ing around

Fran here again. Our journey from Hoi An to Nha Trang was horrendous! After several night trains, and no way to get to Nha Trang from Hoi An without back tracking to Da Nang, we decided to give the sleeper bus a try. These buses are run by Tourist companies and are large coaches with beds inside. My initial view was positive. Three rows of bunk beds which were leather recliner chairs with added leg room. However, there was no where to put your hand luggage so this ended up wedged at most people’s feet. Even without the luggage, the beds were not quite long enough for you to fully stretch out. This made it quite difficult to get into a comfortable position. The top of the chair/beds did not go completely flat so you were never entirely horizontal. This meant that every time the driver braked (which was probably every 30 secs) your feet hit the bottom of the bed. Furthermore (sorry, my moan will be over soon!), the driver did not exactly obey the speed limit (if indeed there was one), so every corner involved being shunted from one side of the narrow bed to the other. The driver also played Vietnamese music the whole journey. The final straw as at 5.30am (we were due into Nha Trang at 6am), when the driver decided to give us all a wake up call of techno music at full volume – very friendly! Needless to say, neither Rich nor I got any sleep.

Anyway, tired and hot (even at 6.30am the temperature was warming up), we tried to find the hotel that we had booked. We wondered up and down the street where the hotel was meant to be but could not find it. In our tired and hungry state we decided to give up temporarily and splash out on breakfast at the Rainbow Cafe. Rainbow Divers is a dive centre where my cousin, Sarah, used to work and it has a cafe in Nha Trang that serves western food. We enjoyed our scrambled eggs and salmon while the centre manager helpfully drew us a map to our hotel.

The hotel was great, nice bed, air-con, ensuite for a fraction of what we were paying for a dorm bed in a hostel in Europe – bonus! It also served great breakfasts with fabulous banana pancakes. Our first day was spent sleeping to catch up from the night before and then ensuring that we never have to go on a bus again (at least until Cambodia where there are no trains) by arranging our train tickets for the next leg to Ho Chi Minh City. We met up (this time by email arrangement) with Tommy and Kelly from our Trans-Siberian train for dinner and a fair few drinks in the evening.

For our second day, Rich managed to persuade me to hire a moped. He drove and I sat on the back pointing out various obstacles (typical back seat driver that I am). After the fear of getting hit my another moped while in the city, once out on the open road I really enjoyed myself as there was very little traffic. Rich did a sterling job with the driving too!

Richard on his trusty steed

Fran happy to have her feet on the ground

We went to Bai Dai Beach (long beach) which was recommended in the Rough Guide. It was a beautiful expanse of white sand which ran in an arc for 10km. Once on the beach it was a little disappointing to see all the rubbish that the locals had dumped or that had been washed up. However, we found a nice spot, did a bit of litter picking and lay down to bake. That only lasted about 25 minutes because it was so hot but a dip in the sea cooled us down.

Bai Dai Beach

Fighting for my spot on the sand

We went to one of the shack style seafood restaurants for lunch which was very nice. Sadly, about half way through our meal I noticed that a local man from the nearby group was sitting being mopped by another woman because he was sweating too much. My initial concern was that he had food poisoning and we were eating at the same restaurant. However, his condition obviously deteriorated when he appeared to collapse. We knew something was wrong when his friends started administering CPR. We sat and watched in horror feeling completely helpless – people clearly had called the emergency services as they all had their mobiles but Nha Trang was probably a good hour away. Neither Rich nor I thought we could do CPR any better than the man’s friends so could not help. A taxi did arrive but I don’t think anyone wanted to stop giving the man CPR to move him. This went on for 20 mins or so and a western man did come over who seemed to have some medical experience and from what we could gather, he indicated that if the man had been like that for 20 mins or so then there was no hope. It appeared that the poor guy, who must have been in his late 40s or early 50s, had passed away.

We felt that it wouldn’t be right to just carry on with our meals after that so left and made our way back to Nha Trang. We thought it would be nice to buy some incense and light it in the chap’s memory when we next got the chance. We had learnt that this is what the Vietnamese do at temples – the equivalent of lighting a candle in a church. The episode definitely reminded us that life is fragile and that everyone should make the most of it.

On our final day in Nha Trang we decided just to chill on the beach, which was pretty stunning overlooking several islands, and recuperate before the next leg. Nha Trang is worth a visit for the stunning beach and, though commercialised to an extent, it was actually nice to have air-conditioned restaurants and western food. Sitting on our hotel’s roof top bar sipping a complementary drink was pretty nice too! We departed Nha Trang on a day train to our final destination in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon and still called Saigon by most of the locals). I’ll hand the blogging baton back to Rich for the next instalment…