Nick’s world tour

Hoi An was a great place to spend a couple of days, but too expensive to stay any longer. Besides I couldn’t stomach any more noodles…

We’ve now arrived in Nha Trang. I must stay here for five days for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, this travelling thing is getting tiring (!), not spending more than a couple of nights in any one place for at least a month.

And secondly, after they screwed up my visa in Vientienne, I need to get it extended. I could rush through without seeing everything I wanted to, or as I’m enjoying Vietnam so much, pay the $20 and get an extension.

As it’s the weekend when we arrive, I have to wait here til Tuesday to get my passport back. Which is such a pain as there’s a nice sandy beach, lined with coconut palms just a few minutes away from the hotel.

There’s a nice touch in the seafront illuminations: little hammer and sickle symbols everywhere. You don’t get that at Blackpool! 

We went on a cruise round the islands in the bay, on Mama Linh’s boat. We did a bit of snorkelling over a reef, which was fun as I’d never seen a real life reef up close before, with the tropical fish and coloured coral (though some of it looked a little dead). It’s a shame that some of the local tourists thought collecting it was a good idea… Then we had an excellent lunch on the top deck of the boat, followed by the “singing and dancing”. Not as bad as it first appeared, the crew produced an electric guitar, a drum kit made from oil drums and a couple of microphones. We were treated to some local songs, then they sang a song for each of the nationalities present. The English contingent onboard were treated to “Yellow Submarine”, only spoiled by them forcing me to sing…. After getting us all up to dance (which none of the Asians onboard did, they just seemed to like laughing at us) to La Bamba, it was time for the floating bar.

This consists of a man sitting in a lifebuoy with a crate of the local mulberry wine, dishing out glasses to us, who were also floating around in rubber rings. It’s great to spend time in countries with no concept of health and safety.

I didn’t do anything “else” cultural, just spent the rest of the time on the beach. And hopefully my passport is back now and I can leave tomorrow morning.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 at 2:31 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.