Life's a Beach

Nha Trang

After the full on schedule over the last month or so, it’s great to have some time to relax for a bit. And what better place to do just that than here in Nha Trang. It’s small enough to have a quiet day at the beach but big enough to stay out boozing til all hours of the morning. The first day we had here was brilliant weather-wise, leading to a bit of sunburn the following day. Unfortunately, it packed in a bit for the next few days. That didn’t stop us going to the beach though, since it was still 30ish degrees and the water was nice and warm as well. We’ve had the occasional massive down pour but otherwise it has just been overcast with some patchy rain.

Gladly, the sun is back out today and hopefully it will stay that way. There is also plenty to see and do here, night or day. So far we’ve done a fair bit, including visiting a temple with a massive Buddha over looking the city, a cable car ride to an island (see below) and a boat trip. We were hoping the boat trip was going to be a whole bunch of people around our age, since the they are renowned for being great booze trips. Unfortunately, it didn’t really work out that way. Instead we had a bus load of middle aged Chinese tourists. Surprising what a bit of Vietnamese alcohol can do though. They ended up being rowdier than expected and we actually had a pretty fun day out. The boat stopped at four islands throughout the day. One had an aquarium, one had good spots for snorkeling, one had a fish farm and one was just a nice place to relax. The trip also included a massive lunch and a bit of booze, all for a measly US$6. Also, for all you divers out there, Nha Trang is meant to be a great place for it, with visibility up to 30m on a good day and plenty of fish, coral and other sea life to see.

Now I know I go on about food all the time but this place deserves special mention. With the fishing port a couple of kms away from the centre of town, a wide variety of unbelievably fresh seafood is available at all of the numerous restaurants here. And it is superb. The best seafood meal we’ve had here was a big mixed platter served with rice and veges. It had prawns, mussels, oysters, calamari, clams and a whole snapper. It’s funny how quickly you get used to paying next to nothing for food here. This was a bit of a splash out for us, as it cost a whopping US$10 for the two of us! Other highlights include marinated bbq pork, massive hotpot meals and a plethora of fresh fruit (including pomelo, mango, tamarind and of course pineapple).

In other news, we have decided to grow some filthy mo’s for the Indian leg of our journey. Yes, that’s right folks, contain your excitement, today is officially the last day that we are allowed to shave the ‘stache. Serious consideration has been given as to which style to implement, with a number of factors determining the outcome. While the handlebar was certainly high on the list, both of us will instead be aiming for a decent (and incredibly attractive) full width slug. Due to the overwhelming interest that this will undoubtedly evoke, weekly updates will be shown on the blog. And no, Nath Hay, they will not be enhanced with mascara (I don’t think mascara comes in ginga orange anyway).

Vin Pearl

There's an island off-shore here called Vin Pearl. I'm sure that's not it's proper name but that's what the sign says so we'll run with that. Vin Pearl is connected to the main land by a massive cable car system that is a pretty cool ride with some good views of Nha Trang. The fun and natural beauty of this place stops however the moment you get off the cable car. From the mainland Vin Pearl looks like a place you can go over to and have a relax on the beach and a nice lunch or something. But once there it can only be described as Disney Land with a brain hemirage. The whole place is being set up by someone to be an amusement park come resort. You step off the cable car onto a terrace with roller coasters, ferris wheels and people walking round in costumes resembling Disney characters (Donald Duck et al) but just different enough to avoid a copy write infringement. The strange thing is the place is dead, the rides aren't moving and there was hardly anyone there. There is all this fake rock about and they are in the process of building a beach. This blew me away as Im not sure what was wrong with the beaches and rocks that were there already.

We wandered into a fake rock building that turned out to be a mega games arcade. There was all this stuff like Virtual Reality jetskiing, it's not like you can hire the real thing on the mainland or anything! My favourite was a "4D Movie Cinema". This got me pretty excited. I dont remember much from school apart from we played touch rugby at lunch time and in 3rd Form I got my arse kicked by an Asian kid called Gabrielle who went on to become Dux. I do vaguely recall though from Yr11 physics that the 4th Dimension is theoretically time travel. I pondered the many options now available to me, do I go forward to the future, or travel back to the past? After some debate between my brain and my imagination I thought it would be cool to travel back in time and see Jesus, before he was famous. I could have given him some tips like the fact that long hair, beards and caftans wont be in fashion until 1962, so he'd be better off keeping his hair short and buying some cargo pants. Im sure if we got on well he could have given me a shout-out in the New Testament or something. It turned out to my sheer disappointment that the 4D Cinema was just one of those ones where you wear 3D glasses and things jump out at you. Stink bro.

The rest of the island was more crap, it's the sort of place you would go on holiday of you dont want to move. You could stay at the hotel, take the shuttle that goes to all the places on the island, ride the escalators into the buildings and Im sure you could pay someone to feed you your food if you wanted. To really drive normal people off the island, every few metres there is a speaker inside a fake rock which plays music along the lines of a saxophone Celine Dion covers. I was surprised to not see more speakers ripped from their mounts and thrown in the ocean, because that's what you feel like doing after 30 seconds of hearing it.

The whole thing was kinda strange and we were convinced that it's all a big cover for something, our favourite theory is that there is a nuclear warhead hidden underneath and when they want to fire it the whole island will open outwards. A girl told me yesterday that it's run by the Russian Mafia and it's a cover for a money laundering operation. This is an OK theory but I have my reasons not to trust her. These were 1. She was drunk and it was 2pm. 2. She was Scottish. 3. Her voice was lower than mine. But despite all that she wasnt too hard on the eye so I heard her out.

While I'm talking rubbish I thought I would share that I have discovered the worlds most annoying song, bar anything with Crazy Frog in it. There was a song that was a hit in the early 90's that went "She wore an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini...". Yeah that one. Well here all the restaurants think it's really cute to play a plonky style beach cover of it over and over. I'm not usually the murderous type, but I swear if I hear that song one more time I'm going to rip the stereo unit from its mounting and strangle the DJ with the cord!

Last observation. There are 3 ways of crossing the road here depending on what part of town you are in. In most places you have to do the Hokey Pokey as you cross the road, or the Moonwalk if you decide to do it backwards.

In less trendy areas you are required to do the 2-step or the "White Man's Shuffle" as you make your way to the over side.

But in places where cool is the vibe, you strut, disco style.

If you are still reading this then odds are you may well be less intelligent than you where when you started. Sorry.