June 28–July 1: Nha Trang

Nha Trang is a medium-sized coastal city that has a great beach, reputedly good nightlife, and lots of water-activities including diving. While I was in Delat, some of my friends have already settled down here. I arrived in the late afternoon and I spent a bit of time looking for a cheap place to stay. This city has a very touristy central area, which meant that most places started at $10/night which was more than I wanted to spend on a place to sleep. To draw out the process, I also stopped to check out each of the numerous dive shops along the way to compare prices, itineraries and to get a feel for their level of competence. I eventually found a dorm for $5/night:

 

 

 

After getting settled in, I resumed my search for a dive outfit to book for the next day. Here’s the one I settled on:

I booked for 3 dives including one dive into a cave that I was very psyched about, all for $50. And I was told I’d get photography thrown in as well… sweet!

 

About a minute after I walked out of the dive shop, I ran into Anna and we went out for some dinner:

 

“Steak” in a delicious buttery sauce, egg, vegetables and a baguette for 30,000d or $1.5. An even better deal than the one in Cambodia!

 

After eating, we went to get Dave and went out for some drinks. Breaking our tradition of finding streetside plastic-chair bars with cheap draft, they took me to a mainstream place- the Ice Bar. Predictably (or maybe not, since this is a hot country), the gimmick here is that they have an ice room upstairs that they keep at a temperature below freezing. Ordinarily, this is a place for VIPs or people that spend lots on drinks, but Dave has a way of quickly becoming everyone’s buddy and got us in after only one 50c beer.

 

 

In the freezer room; we also got some vodka shots

 

After the Ice Bar, the others went to a convenience store to buy booze and mix and go drink on the beach. I’ve had a really long day as it was and had diving the following morning, so I opted out.

 

One of the 3 main backpacker streets by night

 

My dive day was a bit of a mixed bag. For starters, since the dive shop I signed on with didn’t get enough people to make it worthwhile to use their boat, they lumped me and the divemaster onto another company’s boat which also hosted some snorkelers. This meant that the original itinerary went out the window and there was no cave dive. The dives themselves were pretty good- conditions were excellent that day with at least 15m vis and only bit of current and swell. The reefs were very nice, but I was disappointed that they were not teeming with fish. Maybe due to excessive fishing, the waters here were nowhere near as populated as they should be. Also, it turned out that the photography was actually video, which I’m not sure if it’s a plus or minus…

Here are a few screencaps from the video:

 

Uh oh! I may have been in Asia for too long…

 

Pipe fish

 

Not sure what it is and neither did the divemaster or the shop owner. It has enormous pectoral fins that are big enough to be wings.

 

Life under the corals

 

Another mystery fish. This one is about a meter long, has the proportions and swim style of sharks but then there’s that tail… Anyone know what this is?

 

While I was out diving, Anna was doing an island hopping/snorkeling daytrip and Dave was supposed to be working. I had a late lunch with Drew and Aya, the only other westerners on my boat and then went back to the dive shop later in the afternoon to get the video from them along with a partial refund due to the reduced dive count. I met up with the others in the evening, but other than going out for some food, none of us really felt like doing anything so we called it an early night. We walked around for a bit looking for fried rice or noodles since I had enough Pho lately and we didn’t want to keep going to the same steak/egg/baguette place.

 

The next day, I resolved to do some sightseeing (and also had to go to the bus company office to book my next bus trip because they weren’t picking up their phone). I intended to leave in the evening on the night bus but it had already filled up, so I was stuck here another night. Regardless, I continued my tour of the city. Here are the pics:

 

A roundabout that links 5 other streets

 

 

Nha Trang Cathedral. It seemed to be closed due to construction.

 

I stepped into a Yamaha scooter dealer to escape the heat and see what the new scooter scene was like in Vietnam. I was surprised at how many different models they had- at least a dozen, with a few retro, some cute, some sporty and many mainstream with minor differentiating details. It seems like 5 speed (semi-)manuals is the new thing this year. Every manual scooter I had before was a 4 speed.

 

A secondary objective of my walking around today was to buy some snacks for the bus ride and find a replacement water bottle since I seem to have left mine on the last bus when I was rushing to get off. This meant that I stopped in a few shopping centers and supermarket stores:

In this shopping center, they had a store with video gaming stations. One of the kids was playing Zelda on the Gamecube.

 

The Nha Trang Train Station

 

War monument in a small park

 

One very touristy site that I visited was the Long Son Pagoda:

 

 

I arrived just in the nick of time to see the inside as the monks were about to retire to the temple and lock themselves in about 10mins later

 

 

At the top of the hill behind the temple, there was a giant Buddha statue and nice views of the city

 

On the way down, there was this laying-down-Buddha statue

 

When I entered the temple complex, a woman who claimed to be an orphan that grew up in this temple tried to show me around, but I was skeptical of her motives. And rightfully so, as it turned out that she wanted me to buy some $5 post cards from her to “support the school”.

 

Next, I went to another nearby temple, but this one was much more low-key: I was the only visitor:

 

 

The inside was not accessible since the monks have already locked themselves in

 

One of the major roads along the coastline:

 

 

 

One frustratingly recurring sight in the tupperware/container aisle of every supermarket I’ve visited. All the “sports” bottles have a flip top. I couldn’t help but think the people that make/market these must either be idiots or have never done any physical activity whatsoever as that latch feels like it would open if you so much as flick the full bottle upside down. <facepalm> The search goes on…

 

 

Some waterfront parks and ornamental structures

 

Khanh Hoa Museum. It was closed down, though.

 

 

Along the way back, I stopped by yet another embroidery workshop and gallery:

 

 

I then did something unbackpacker-ish and went into the KFC. My intentions were innocent- I wanted to see if they had soft-serve ice-cream like the Lotteria (McD’s knockoff) franchise. While inside, a local combo caught my eye and it was pretty damn good value so I gave it a chance:

 

For 35,000d ($1.75) you get about 3/4 cup rice, a piece of fried chicken breast, veggies, gravy, a generously sized salad and a refreshingly cool Pepsi. As bad as it sounds, this was one of the better meals I’ve had in Vietnam so far…

 

I checked in on Dave and Anna but nobody was in their room, so I went back to the dorm an did some blogging. I went out later that night and did end up finding them. Tom from Saigon had also arrived from Delat with a Canadian girl- Heather- so we went out as a group to the steak/egg/baguette place and then went to find some cheap drinking place. The first place we went was a local streetside pub that sold “fresh” (draught) beer for 40,000d a glass (20c), We had a drink there but it was very obvious that the owner didn’t want us around since we were just there for the cheap beer and not ordering food. Annoyed with his attitude, we left…

We went to the Ice bar next to have some less cheap beer, and when it came time to pay, we found out that they jacked up the price by 1.5x supposedly due to the Vietnamiese tourist influx (it was their holiday week now). Pissed off yet again, we went to a corner bar with a promo that you get a free highball with each beer. They also had a pool table, so I had a game with the guys and then hung out for a while.

 

 

 

On my last day in Nha Trang, the 5 of us went to Vinpearl Land, the closest thing to Disneyland that the Vietnamese have. Vinpearl is on an island accessible by “the longest cable-car in the world*- 3Km” (*=over water). The main attraction here is the waterpark and also some other land rides, a nice beach, an aquarium, arcade and other games. It took us a while to get mobilized but we ended up getting there around 11ish.

 

On the mainland side, there is a huge ornamental fountain near the building with the cable-cars

 

Very reminiscent of the gondolas going up the mountains on snowboarding trips. I miss snowboarding…

 

Looking back at the mainland

 

The views from the gondola were pretty nice:

Approaching the island with its tacky lettering

 

One of the excellent beaches on the island

 

We went straight for the waterslides and had some good fun in the process. Some of the slides involved floating tubes (1 and 2 person) and even a larger raft.

 

 

Me going on the above blue-red segment slide

 

 

L: As fun as the slides were, the staircases that led up to them were unforgivable- a very widely spaced steel grate surface. It hurt every time you took a step and it wasn’t just me being a pansy, everyone bitched and winced on the way up… R: A 5-person-in-parallel slide with mats you slide on

 

Anna and Dave racing down the slides

 

They also had a wave park, but due to our timing, the waves stopped about 1min after we got there

 

Dave and Anna on a 2-person slide

 

Our group (minus Heather) on the raft slide. This was one of my favorites- you get a bit of hang time when the raft goes up the lip of the slide

 

Next we went to the beach for a swim:

 

Beach at Vinpearl

 

It was a perfect beach with pale white sand (supposedly all-natural, too)

 

There was a lobster or crayfish or whatever that is a few meters into the water

 

After a swim and some time on the beach, we went to the excellent aquarium which included a 90m conveyor tunnel through a big habitat. They had many types of fish and wildlife including stingrays, turtles, at least 2 kinds of shark and one interesting big fish that was like a cross between a ray and shark. It really was like what you would see on an epic dive compressed into 3 minutes.

 

Some very large fish

 

Various stages of shark embryology

 

A very well camouflaged stonefish

 

Eels

 

Glass tunnel in Underwater World at Vinpearl

 

 

After this, I left the others on the beach to check out the arcades…

 

They also had bumper cars in here

 

They had a few racing games but some were actually from the late 80s. In a way, it was interesting to see the progress

 

One of the more advanced games with modern(ish) graphics and a moving cockpit

 

Overall, the arcade was a bit of a letdown as they mostly had old games and there were way too many people so you had to wait for a turn. I then met everyone to say our goodbyes as I was leaving to Hoi An tonight and they were one day behind due to the bus filling up.

 

Another scenic ride over the ocean

 

I took a moto back into the backpacker area and had KFC again since it was a quick, reliable meal with great bang-for-buck. I got my bags and went to wait for the night bus. It arrived at 6:40 but this sleeper bus was nowhere near as good as the one that I took between Dalat and Nha Trang. It was much more cramped and not at all comfortable…

 

 

My “bed” was only about 1.5 water-bottles wide and despite being designed for tourists, the beds were only long enough if you were 4.5 feet tall. All these things might be bearable if at least the beds had some decent padding, but no such luck.

 

And so I made my way towards Hoi An…