Goodbye Vietnam!

We would happily have spent a couple more days in Dalat, but with only a week and a half left in Vietnam before our visas ran out, it was time to move on to Hoi An. Our vehicle of choice for this overnight journey was a sleeper bus, which in theory sounds fantastic - it's basically a bus with beds, blankets and pillows. In reality, with 14 hours of potholed, twisty roads to navigate, sleeping on this bus was like lying in a narrow cot on the floor of a boat during rough seas. Never again. Within three hours of leaving, I missed Dalat already and hoped Hoi An would be worth the journey.

Thankfully it turned out to be a really nice little town to spend a few days, despite the heat and an overwhelming number of tourists. The Old Town area, which runs along the riverside, is full of little lanes with pretty French style villas painted yellow and draped with climbing plants. In the evenings, all the restaurants are lit up with colourful lanterns, which created the perfect setting for dinner and a few beers by the riverside.


Every other shop in Hoi An is a tailor, so I took the opportunity to have a colourful summer dress made. Then, because I liked it so much, I bought two more. In total, the three specially made dresses came to about 20pounds. Even though it's not really within our budget, I've decided I want to try and be more colourful (in terms of clothing) when I return home, and this seemed like the perfect way to start.


You'd think we'd be bored of beaches by now, but we found out that there were a couple nearby and it seemed silly not to check at least one of them out. An Bang beach turned out to be gorgeous – kind of what I'd hoped to find in Mui Ne. White sand, cool sea, mountains in the distance and loads of these cool round fishing boats. You're probably all getting tired of the usual beach pictures by now, so instead here's one of me posing with the fishing boats in my new sunhat:


As nice as it looked, the sand turned out to be almost too hot to walk on so after dumping our stuff on a sun lounger we literally hot footed it over to the sea, which was so cold that it made Karl's nipples hurt!

We also arranged to meet a friend in Bangkok in a couple of weeks time, and the easiest way to get there seemed to be a flight from Saigon, so after a relaxing two days we headed down south to Nha Trang. Unfortunately, my vow to never board a sleeper bus again was broken as there didn't seem to be any other feasible way to get there. This time, however, I was prepared! A couple of travel sickness pills from my trusty medical kit did the trick, and we actually managed to get some sleep and arrive in Nha Trang feeling fairly well rested. To everyone who laughed at me for packing my bag over a month before our trip, it pays to be organised!

Now, Nha Trang is known as being a bit of a party town for travellers, with plenty of bars offering happy hours for practically half the day. I fully expected it to be fun but very touristy, and was really pleased to find that (as well as being both of these things) it also has a very local scene. The backpackers generally seem to stick to a few streets lined with bars, restaurants, coffee shops and budget guesthouses, and surprisingly few tourists can actually be found on the beach during the day compared to the numbers that emerge after dark. This was quite nice as it meant that the beach was generally peaceful in the daytime.

However, at around 4pm everyday, Nha Trang's inhabitants start to flock to the beach in droves on foot, motorbike or bicycle. By 5pm it's absolutely packed with families picnicking on the sand, playing in the sea and flying kites. I sat for two hours by the beach and didn't see a single white person in the sea! The atmosphere is fun and friendly, and one evening I happily sat on the beach for two hours just people-watching – kids making up silly games in the sand, teenage boys competing to do the best somersaults in the sea, men doing laps between buoys and the shore, women doing a leisurely breaststroke just like at home!


Meanwhile, the sky had darkened (another daily occurrence at the moment) and it had begun to lightly drizzle. It didn't last long, and just as the skies were beginning to clear, a haze of rainbow started to appear. Before long it was a full arch, with a second bow forming just beside it. Everything combined – the happy atmosphere, the clearing sky, the rainbow, islands in the distance – was actually quite breathtaking in a way that I hadn't really expected.

I tried taking a few photos but my camera couldn't really capture it all the way I'd hoped. I don't mind too much though, because even though nothing really happened, I think that was one of my most vivid and memorable experiences so far.


The whole time I'd been wishing Karl was there to see it with me – I'd left him in a cafe with the laptop for a couple of hours. It turned out he hadn't stayed there long and had gone for a walk along the beach instead, so he'd seen it all too. Plus, he'd bought me an awesome belated birthday present – a kite! It was dark by the time we met each other, but we had a go with the kite on the beach anyway:


It wasn't too successful, so we tried again the following afternoon and jeez that thing went high! It pretty much unwound most of the string from the reel and flew itself, I had to grip on quite tightly so as not to lose it!

Unfortunately the kite was too big to fit into either of our backpacks, so we gave it away to a family with a young daughter at breakfast the next morning.

The good thing about Nha Trang being so touristy is that it makes it a great place for meeting other travellers and, well, getting drunk. So this is exactly what we did with a couple we met – Catherine and Kym - at a great bar called Crazy Kim's, where we played Jenga, Connect 4 and pool, while downing too many shots (including tequila, unwisely) in celebration of Catherine's birthday. Needless to say, the following day was spent feeling hungover.

A couple of days later we boarded a flight from Saigon to Bangkok. I was a bit sad to leave Vietnam - we had a great time and there's so much we didn't get a chance to see, like the whole north of the country! We're back in Bangkok now and I'm quite looking forward to getting to know a new country.

Watch this space for one more post on Vietnam though – the food!!