Nah Trang

After 2 nights in quiet Mui Ne we've now come up to Nah Trang. We had our own little bungalow about 10 metres away from the beach. In between was a little Palm leaf thatched shelter with deck chairs, hammocks and tables where we would eat, drink and do nothing. It had an open restaurant with great vietnamese food for less than a dollar a meal. It was almost empty of others and the white(ish) sands and clear(ish) water, the coconut trees, the little fishing boats floating by and everthing else made it perfection, or close it to it.

But now in Nah Trang, we were back to the hard life of tourism. That is, we walked to some big old Cham ruins then spent the rest of the day at a spa. For $20 we had a mineral mud bath, mineral water bath, high pressure hosing (surlely mineral too), 45 minute massage, sauna and then a couple of hours in a standard warm pool. The only bad thing was that after noticing that we were surrounded by picturesque Gum I couldn't get the song "gimme a home among the gum trees...". Oh well, close to perfection again.

The next day was one of the best though. A simple 6 dollar whole day boat tour of some local islands had some surprisers that made it pretty memorable. Firstly, to go with the perfect (no 'ish' this time) water and weather came Bob Marley playing loudly over the boat's speakers. The first indication that the day was gonna be good.

The boat had about 13 Aussies, 2 Swedish girls, 2 Danish guys, 2 Vietnamese guys, 1 German, 1 American bloke who was not the only person to point out that although he was american we shouldn't hold that against him. The Vietnamese guide, named Tan, was great. Breaking out an Aussie accent from his repertoire of Irish, English, American and three words of New Zealandish, he spent the day telling stories of the 11 years he'd spent on the boat since he was 13. Saying,

"You know the Kangaroos footy team? 4 years ago they were on this boat. Drank so much! You know Wayne Carey, yeah? He's a wanker, but drank 28 beers! But tell me, why do all you Aussies always get naked? The whole team, naked. You Aussies are even worse than the Spanish blokes and their G-strings. I say to Wayne, you gotta be careful here the police'll lock you up, but they spent the whole day naked. But, big bananas though, you know what I mean."

On the second of our 4 swimming stops we were served the usual huge Vietnamese feast where it is considered impolite if the host runs out of food whether the guests are full or not. Seafood, salads and beer went down really well and were followed by one of the crew bringing out a rusty old drumkit, another got a guitar, another a kids tambourine and the captain a microphone. The following Karaoke with Tan and the Captain poledancing on the table we'd just had lunch from and singing old vietnamese classics, unidentifyable songs that were supposed to be classic western songs and, of course, The Beatles 'Yesterday' which is so far the only song known to all people SE Asia.

After the concert the Captain yelled "FLOATING BAR", grabbed an orange life-saver and jumped into the water where a slab of polystyrene was floating with about 6 bottles of red wine on top. The crew threw in all the remaining life-savers and made us follow. The Floating Bar consisted of about 15 people floating in life-savers around a crazy old Vietnamese bloke who was desperately handing out and refilling plastic cups of a sickly sweet mulberry wine. As the stuff was so bad he couldn't even give it all away, so when he floated past me he grabbed me and asked my name and where I was from. While yelling "Lady and Gentlemans, this is Anger from the land of too many Kangaroos. Everybody now say go, go, go!" he indicated, quite persuasively that I should drink. And I did. About half a bottle of it. After a few others, and then the captain himself were coerced into doing the same the wine was gone and we got back on to the boat to wash away the bad taste with another Tiger Beer. Fortunately the wine must not have been strong and we were all perfectly sober through the afternoon.

The day continued with more sunbathing, swimming, snorkelling and diving off the top of the boat, and Tan's admission that he had a wife and daughter and acted, "differently at home". Then at 6.30 when we were back in Nah Trang and only an hour later on the bus for the 13 hour bus ride to Hoi An, but thats another story...