Nha Trang is the Vietnamese version of Sihanoukville, or the Gold Coast, or Blackpool. It's a beach resort that a lot of Vietnamese and foreigners go to.
To wake myself up I went for a swim on the way to lunch and was pleasantly surprised to find that the water was actually cold (well, for a couple of minutes anyway). It was the first time in a month that I'd actually been cold and it was great.
We relaxed around town that day with another swim later on and a very lazy evening.
The next day I went scuba diving and Lianne went snorkeling. We went out on a boat to some of the small islands off the coast. Diving was OK, but vis was only about 5 metres and there wasn't much to look at. Good to get back in the water though. Lianne enjoyed her snorkeling because she spent most of the hottest part of the day in the water. And the lunch was really nice.
The next day we were planning on a trip to monkey island but Lianne was feeling sick so we rescheduled it to the following day and lazed around for the day with another trip to the beach. That evening we tracked down a bar that was showing the Monaco Grand Prix and watched that for a couple of hours with EJ and Craig, another couple with common interests in travelling and F1.
The next day we went on our rescheduled trip out to some of the islands and it was a truly bizarre experience. We started off with the guide singing a Vietnamese song and then a boat trip out to the first island where we fed the Ostriches and Deer. We were only there 20 minutes before we were back on the boat to the second stop. Here you had the opportunity to ride an Ostrich or an Elephant (which we declined both).
We then saw a truly bizarre elephant and bear show. We never thought we'd see a bear in a tutu riding a bicycle, let alone a moped. It was all quite disturbing.We went for a swim then to cool down and to wash off some of the bizarreness.
After lunch we headed off to what was meant to be the highlight of the trip (for Lianne at least) - Monkey island.
Once we arrived we were taken to another show, which topped the first one in terms of weirdness.
Let me put it like this, the show opened with two goats, in a carriage, dressed as a bride and groom, being pulled by dogs with monkeys on their backs. We both spent the entire show with our jaws dropped. It was like driving past a car accident.
After the show ended we got our chance to go see the monkeys in the wild, which was the bit that Lianne was most looking forward to. However once we got there and we found ourselves surrounded by dozens of monkeys all jumping around and looking for food Lianne got quite scared and didn't really want to touch them (or them touch her). We've heard that Monkey bites are a fairly reliable source of rabies so that didn't help either.
Back to the mainland (and not too soon, truth be told) and we had about 4 hours to kill before our next over night train journey. We'd checked out of our hotel so didn't have anywhere to shower, however we had a plan. We grabbed a change of clothes and a towel, threw them in a bag and then strolled into the nearest hotel with a pool. It was one of the nicer hotels in town, but we were confident that the staff wouldn't be able to tell we weren't guests there (we all look the same you see). A quick dip in the pool and the use of their shower and we were sorted.
A bite to eat and a taxi to the train station and we were ready to go to Hoi An...
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