Playing in the dirty South China Sea…

After two days in Saigon, Danny and I took an overnight train to Nha Trang. We arrived in Nha Trang at 6 am and checked into a really cool room with a patio overlooking the ocean. I was excited to discover our tv showed CNN and I was able to watch alot of the Democratic Convention. We decided to stay for three days.

We spent our first day just chillin at the beach, swimming in the pool, and getting massages!

The second day we took a boat tour to some of the surrounding islands. We were promised good snorkeling which turned out to be a joke as the masks were dirty and foggy and the water was DIRTY! The South China Sea is known to be polluted and I wasn’t impressed as all I saw while snorkeling was a woman’s shirt floating by me, and empty bottles!

Our tour was considered a “party boat tour”. We stopped near one island and were all given inner tubes to chill in for a while and we could swim up to the “floating bar” for a questionable mixed drink of sorts. Later we were entertained by a very random “Vietnamese Pop Band” that performed for us. The singer started randomly selecting people on the boat to come on stage and sing a song from their country of his choice. Thank god he didn’t pick me as I was so not in the mood for such games! Danny was the only Aussie on board, so he was selected to represent his country and was told to sing “Waltzing Matilda” a song I had never heard before. He made me laugh! I was also amused when someone from each country was forced to sing their version of “Farajaka”.

Danny chillin on some island I can’t remember the name of…

Later that evening Danny and I headed to Long Son Pagoda to see the Giant Seated Buddha. We had an incident with a lady and a child who were selling incense. I didn’t want to buy any and the little girl started crying and throwing a temper tantrum (which is of course an act to make you feel bad so you end up paying for something you don’t want)! I was so irritated with the situation and all the people that were crowding me demanding me to buy stuff that I literally fled the scene! Danny was confused about what had happened and did not understand why I reacted the way I did and a bit angry at me for leaving him behind to deal with the beggers. Three months in Southeast Asia will make one a bit jaded and intolerant of all schemes aimed to get your money, especially when children are involved!

Despite the fact that I am by no means a morning person, I can sometimes be persuaded to see a beautiful sunrise.

We had someone drive us to a waterfall which I forget the name of. We didn’t know we were going to have to do some hard rock climbing which turned out to be a bit hazardous with the shoes we were wearing.

We visited another temple with great views of the city.

We decided to go to a really nice restaurant our last night in Nha Trang. We ate at the Sailing Club which was located right on the beach and was expensive for Vietnam standards. We had a late dinner about 9 pm and I started feeling not so great when I went to bed at midnight. I awoke at 3 am with an urge to run to the toilet…unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough as most of the damage had already been done…IN THE BED! Yes this was a horrifying moment but my embarrassment didn’t come close to comparing to how physically ill I felt! I have never been so sick from food poisoning in my entire life! Sorry if this is TMI for anyone!

And the worst part was that we were scheduled to leave Nha Trang at 8 am to begin our four day motorbike ride through the Central Highlands…

To see my photos of Nha Trang CLICK HERE.