Francesca and Henk-Jan's Backpacking Trip!
Saturday, April 17, 2010
...And Out At The Sea!!!
Bones aching from the rocky trip to Nha Trang, we stumbled off the bus and found a taxi driver who took us to our guesthouse. It was still very early in the AM and we rested for a while before heading out to find some food. Let me tell you a little about why we decided to visit Nha Trang. We heard it was a beautiful beach town on the coast of Vietnam… and wow it was! With just 300,000 inhabitants (but a lot of hotels springing up all over the place) the town didn’t seem overwhelmed like the tourist-ridden Phuket. When we walked along the beach there we just a handful of other people, and we really felt the tranquility of the environment around us. I couldn’t get over the color of the water. There were bright and varying shades of blue highlighted by a sea-green… just breathtaking.
After a quick lunch of uneventful curry, we headed towards the beach to get a closer look at what we had seen in the distance. As we walked along the sand, we spotted a large, pink, flower-like building in the distance. It was the city’s icon, the Tram Huong tower. What could be inside there? Obviously we decided to investigate. Inside was a war memorial, a sales center for Sanatech bird’s nests, an art gallery, and most importantly an awesome view from the roof where we took a few nice pictures. We started walking back to the hostel around 2:00 PM, deciding that we needed more rest from the long bus ride the night before. However at 6:30 PM or so the two of us went out to Jungle Travel, a travel agent we had looked up in town, and discussed the boat trip options with them. We also decided to get some take-away from a local Italian place – Da Fernando - which was too packed with people to sit down. Fantastic food, we discovered, when we dug in back home while watching The Simpsons!
The next morning (the 14th) was beach day! We started by having lunch at a restaurant with a perfect view of the beach (because it was right on it!) where I had some bread and butter and Henk and I shared a delicious, buttery eel! We both gave it a thumbs-up, although the scales with a little annoying to fish out of it. After that we paid for a couple of beach chairs, attempted to ignore the many people trying to sell us stuff, and relaxed on the sand. A short while later we were in the water – and wow was it rough! I was immediately tossed all over the place and tried desperately to get my bearings in the forceful waves. Eventually we got used to them and swam out a bit further. Later on I buried Henk in the sand (which was awesome) and we read a few short stories to each other while revisiting our lounge chairs. Finally a vacation within our vacation! Once we were done at the beach we went to one of the nicer Indian places we spotted for a shared set menu of chicken tikka masala and a collection of other goodies. Yum!
We booked a boat trip for the 15th of April to take us out to a few of the different islands we had read so much about: Mun Island, Mot Island, Tam Beach and an aquarium visit were advertised to us as a package deal. But the price was pretty low so we didn’t expect too much, and we were sure the boat would be quite crowded (which it was)… but that was alright, we just wanted more time in the sea! After being picked up by one guy, tossed onto a seemingly random boat by another guy, and taken away unsure of the quality-to-come of our trip we reached the aquarium. A small thing, there wasn’t much to see and we ended up feeling quite sorry for the trapped fish. I don’t usually have any moral issues with aquariums but the cases in this place seemed really overcrowded! Especially the huge awara fish (which can live up to 60-years-old and weigh up to 400 kilos)… just a long, narrow tank for half a dozen of them. Yikes!
Then we continued on the boat to our snorkeling spot. I wasn’t sure if it was because we were the last boat to arrive in the area and we got screwed-over or because the snorkeling here is overrated (or has been destroyed from the tourism boom) but the snorkeling was nothing noteworthy in the slightest. Really gave us a craving to return to Bali! Most of the people on our boat didn’t seem like they could care less, testing out the jet skis and parasailing instead.
Our boat then moved on to Tam Beach where we found out (awesome!) that we weren’t allowed to stop on the beach itself since it is actually a private resort. Unless we wanted to pay $20/person for a one day entry fee that is… what a joke for them to even put that on the itinerary! But alas, we were stuck on the boat now so we enjoyed the gigantic lunch the crew had prepared for us. (One thing I thought was kinda cool – the benches on the boat actually flipped down to form a huge long table. Neat transformation!) Rice, fish, pork, seafood-mix, vegetables… we did have a lot of food. After the meal the crew played some songs (where did the drums and guitar come from?!) of various national pride, asking people to come ‘onstage’ and help them out. The highlight for Henk and I however, was watching a middle-aged Asian woman stand behind some random white girl who was dancing to the music and blatantly take a zoomed-in picture of her ass! She saw our hysterics and snapped a photo of us as well.
After the karaoke show we enjoyed a ‘floating bar’ (which was one guy pouring us all this nasty pineapple liquor) which wasn’t too special but I was just excited to finally get back in the water! Finally we did make it onto a beach on Mot Island although the sand wasn’t too fantastic here as it was, well, nonexistent. Everything was rocks! But that was alright, we were done in the water for the day. We eagerly took the boat back to Nha Trang, enjoying our fruit dessert, and decided the next day would be all about Vinpearl! The evening after our boat trip we got take away sushi and a deep-fried tempura mix from Rainbow Divers. I had a sushi craving for a little while and was glad to have it satisfied by some salmon and cream cheese rolls!
VINPEARL! Vinpearl is a resort/amusement park/water slide park which has a fantastic beach, a shopping area, two restaurants, a ‘free-for-all’ (unlimited!) arcade games section, an amusement park with fair-style ‘dry’ rides and a water park with ‘wet’ rides (aka HUGE AWESOME SLIDES!) There is even a water show in the evening… all of this funded by an investor who is supposedly Vietnamese mafia! When Henk and I first heard about the amusement park on the other side of the bay, we weren’t sure if it was something we should spend our money on. BUT it had been a long time since we had planned a completely fun-filled day so we caved and decided it would be worth it. The day began with a cable-car ride over which provided us with some fantastic views of the area. It was a bit of an overcast day, but that was actually a good thing because the clouds kept the weather on the cooler side.
We had breakfast at the Rainbow Divers (baguette and juice for Henk and a salmon-cheese croissant plus milk for myself) Then off we went to Vinpearl! We started our adventure by taking a ride on a small rollercoaster. Since there are pretty much no lines for anything, we got to stay on after the first ride and go again! Next we headed towards one of those swinging pirate ships which freaked me out (and made me a little nauseous) before checking out the arcade. There were some really interesting, unique games! One of them was a ‘screaming’ game where multiple players yell in microphones. The louder you yell (or higher pitched, we’re not quite sure) the faster your ‘penguin’ moves in the race for the finish line! I beat Henk the first round, later he beat me in the second.
We also jumped in the bumper cars and gave everyone a run for their money. For some reason, we quickly realized, the local Asians didn’t bump each other very hard in the cars… Henk said later that he saw most of them just driving around! We took turns slamming into them right and left, and surrounded a few select people from both sides. One of the girls I cornered and slammed into even surrendered, not wanting to play anymore… but it’s bumper cars! You can’t just drive around! Aww… Next we went outside and Henk convinced me to go on a ride which seemed OK at first. Looked like it would just swing us around a bit. Later (too late, I was already on the ride) I realized it actually swung us high in the air, upside down, with a couple metal bars to hold us in but NOT STRAPPING US IN so our bodies lay against the metal bars giving a freaky ‘hanging in mid-air’ feeling.
It was noon by then, and we decided to head towards the water slides in case it started to rain. On the way to the slides we passed through a cool aquarium, which had a moving ‘sidewalk’ where we stood and watched these huge stingrays swimming past. Next for the slides! After storing our stuff at the lockers, we ran around checking out the loot. One slide named ‘The Black Hole’ looked really awesome (it was a long twisty-turny slide that shot you out at the end into a giant funnel where you whipped around in circles until being plopped out through the center) but the sign said it was closed! Sad… we noted the lazy river running between the different slides before grabbing some blue mats and climbing up to a row of multi-colored open slides. We shot down them with awesome speed!
More collections of different slides followed: steep blue and green ones, lots of twisty-turnys, and even steeper and taller slides with large bumps and drops that we had to go on in double-person tubes! Some of the enclosed slides even had multi-colored lights inside them! One of the coolest slides we went on was one where you sat in a double-person tube and went down a steep short drop, but then the wide slide slung you back and forth, going higher and faster across the slide horizontally until you skidded into the water at the bottom. We even spent time lounging in the lazy river, which actually had an enclosed section as well that was ‘haunted’ (although it wasn’t fully operational when we were in it) with creepy displays.
After checking out the beach (which was really nice and calm that day!) for a bit, we heard the wave pool had been started and rushed over to check it out. WOW it was intense! We played around in that for a bit and then decided to do a few final slides before drying off and getting some lunch. But wait! Were those people going up the stairs of ‘The Black Hole’ slide?! Yes they were!! ‘The Black Hole’ had opened up just in time and we got to go down it! It was even freakier than I had imagined it, shooting us out into the strange funnel!
What an awesome day… by then we were quite hungry and we debated getting a set menu at one of the two restaurants in the park (before we realized it was a ‘you must by two set menus’ deal) before deciding to order at the other restaurant. And we were glad we did! Eating right next to the sea with a great view, we chowed down on fried chicken in butter sauce, (yeah, I know, I’m a health fanatic!) fries, and a tuna salad. By now it was almost 5:00 PM and we wanted to spend a bit more time in the arcade. Henk and I played as a team in a tank game, with him having more accuracy but me closing more kills. (An average 11 tanks down to his average 4 tanks! Woot!) Then we drove some race-cars and played a ‘Hammer’ game. Take a look at this sweet game! I took a ride on a rather mild ‘bull’ that couldn’t buck me off, and then we took on aliens in a shooter game.
By now it was almost time for the water show so we bought some popcorn and headed over there. I thought it looked pretty neat (and I liked the music) but Henk wasn’t too impressed because (which was true) we had seen better at Singapore’s FantaSea production. Thus we returned to the arcade and played around a bit more before heading out to the cable cars for our return ride around 9:00 PM. The park would close soon, and we wanted to make sure we’d beat the crowds.
The next morning on the 17th of April we debated doing a city tour, but we were really too tired from the day before to do much. Plus we knew what was on the tour (a large white Buddha and some temples) and decided it wasn’t really worth getting up so early. Plus, group tours weren’t running and we were not gonna pay more than a few dollars to see those sights around town. Thus we decided to stay in… sadly, our evil hostel owners (they turned off the AC on us when we were in the room multiple times and promised wireless internet which was going down constantly during our stay) made us pay for an entire additional night for 6 hours even though their place was pretty empty. We even offered them half, but no it wasn’t good enough. Don’t stay at Viet Hai Hotel if you visit Nha Trang!
That afternoon we went to eat pizza and pasta at Da Fernando and that night we got another sleeper bus (this time a relaxing and spacious ‘double-seater’ sleeper)… sick of always watching movies on sleeper buses, we spent the next few hours just laying and talking instead. With how many new things we’ve learned and done on this trip, we always have an endless array of subjects (deep and shallow) to discuss which is just awesome! On to the Old City of Hoi An!
After a quick lunch of uneventful curry, we headed towards the beach to get a closer look at what we had seen in the distance. As we walked along the sand, we spotted a large, pink, flower-like building in the distance. It was the city’s icon, the Tram Huong tower. What could be inside there? Obviously we decided to investigate. Inside was a war memorial, a sales center for Sanatech bird’s nests, an art gallery, and most importantly an awesome view from the roof where we took a few nice pictures. We started walking back to the hostel around 2:00 PM, deciding that we needed more rest from the long bus ride the night before. However at 6:30 PM or so the two of us went out to Jungle Travel, a travel agent we had looked up in town, and discussed the boat trip options with them. We also decided to get some take-away from a local Italian place – Da Fernando - which was too packed with people to sit down. Fantastic food, we discovered, when we dug in back home while watching The Simpsons!
The next morning (the 14th) was beach day! We started by having lunch at a restaurant with a perfect view of the beach (because it was right on it!) where I had some bread and butter and Henk and I shared a delicious, buttery eel! We both gave it a thumbs-up, although the scales with a little annoying to fish out of it. After that we paid for a couple of beach chairs, attempted to ignore the many people trying to sell us stuff, and relaxed on the sand. A short while later we were in the water – and wow was it rough! I was immediately tossed all over the place and tried desperately to get my bearings in the forceful waves. Eventually we got used to them and swam out a bit further. Later on I buried Henk in the sand (which was awesome) and we read a few short stories to each other while revisiting our lounge chairs. Finally a vacation within our vacation! Once we were done at the beach we went to one of the nicer Indian places we spotted for a shared set menu of chicken tikka masala and a collection of other goodies. Yum!
We booked a boat trip for the 15th of April to take us out to a few of the different islands we had read so much about: Mun Island, Mot Island, Tam Beach and an aquarium visit were advertised to us as a package deal. But the price was pretty low so we didn’t expect too much, and we were sure the boat would be quite crowded (which it was)… but that was alright, we just wanted more time in the sea! After being picked up by one guy, tossed onto a seemingly random boat by another guy, and taken away unsure of the quality-to-come of our trip we reached the aquarium. A small thing, there wasn’t much to see and we ended up feeling quite sorry for the trapped fish. I don’t usually have any moral issues with aquariums but the cases in this place seemed really overcrowded! Especially the huge awara fish (which can live up to 60-years-old and weigh up to 400 kilos)… just a long, narrow tank for half a dozen of them. Yikes!
Then we continued on the boat to our snorkeling spot. I wasn’t sure if it was because we were the last boat to arrive in the area and we got screwed-over or because the snorkeling here is overrated (or has been destroyed from the tourism boom) but the snorkeling was nothing noteworthy in the slightest. Really gave us a craving to return to Bali! Most of the people on our boat didn’t seem like they could care less, testing out the jet skis and parasailing instead.
Our boat then moved on to Tam Beach where we found out (awesome!) that we weren’t allowed to stop on the beach itself since it is actually a private resort. Unless we wanted to pay $20/person for a one day entry fee that is… what a joke for them to even put that on the itinerary! But alas, we were stuck on the boat now so we enjoyed the gigantic lunch the crew had prepared for us. (One thing I thought was kinda cool – the benches on the boat actually flipped down to form a huge long table. Neat transformation!) Rice, fish, pork, seafood-mix, vegetables… we did have a lot of food. After the meal the crew played some songs (where did the drums and guitar come from?!) of various national pride, asking people to come ‘onstage’ and help them out. The highlight for Henk and I however, was watching a middle-aged Asian woman stand behind some random white girl who was dancing to the music and blatantly take a zoomed-in picture of her ass! She saw our hysterics and snapped a photo of us as well.
After the karaoke show we enjoyed a ‘floating bar’ (which was one guy pouring us all this nasty pineapple liquor) which wasn’t too special but I was just excited to finally get back in the water! Finally we did make it onto a beach on Mot Island although the sand wasn’t too fantastic here as it was, well, nonexistent. Everything was rocks! But that was alright, we were done in the water for the day. We eagerly took the boat back to Nha Trang, enjoying our fruit dessert, and decided the next day would be all about Vinpearl! The evening after our boat trip we got take away sushi and a deep-fried tempura mix from Rainbow Divers. I had a sushi craving for a little while and was glad to have it satisfied by some salmon and cream cheese rolls!
VINPEARL! Vinpearl is a resort/amusement park/water slide park which has a fantastic beach, a shopping area, two restaurants, a ‘free-for-all’ (unlimited!) arcade games section, an amusement park with fair-style ‘dry’ rides and a water park with ‘wet’ rides (aka HUGE AWESOME SLIDES!) There is even a water show in the evening… all of this funded by an investor who is supposedly Vietnamese mafia! When Henk and I first heard about the amusement park on the other side of the bay, we weren’t sure if it was something we should spend our money on. BUT it had been a long time since we had planned a completely fun-filled day so we caved and decided it would be worth it. The day began with a cable-car ride over which provided us with some fantastic views of the area. It was a bit of an overcast day, but that was actually a good thing because the clouds kept the weather on the cooler side.
We had breakfast at the Rainbow Divers (baguette and juice for Henk and a salmon-cheese croissant plus milk for myself) Then off we went to Vinpearl! We started our adventure by taking a ride on a small rollercoaster. Since there are pretty much no lines for anything, we got to stay on after the first ride and go again! Next we headed towards one of those swinging pirate ships which freaked me out (and made me a little nauseous) before checking out the arcade. There were some really interesting, unique games! One of them was a ‘screaming’ game where multiple players yell in microphones. The louder you yell (or higher pitched, we’re not quite sure) the faster your ‘penguin’ moves in the race for the finish line! I beat Henk the first round, later he beat me in the second.
We also jumped in the bumper cars and gave everyone a run for their money. For some reason, we quickly realized, the local Asians didn’t bump each other very hard in the cars… Henk said later that he saw most of them just driving around! We took turns slamming into them right and left, and surrounded a few select people from both sides. One of the girls I cornered and slammed into even surrendered, not wanting to play anymore… but it’s bumper cars! You can’t just drive around! Aww… Next we went outside and Henk convinced me to go on a ride which seemed OK at first. Looked like it would just swing us around a bit. Later (too late, I was already on the ride) I realized it actually swung us high in the air, upside down, with a couple metal bars to hold us in but NOT STRAPPING US IN so our bodies lay against the metal bars giving a freaky ‘hanging in mid-air’ feeling.
It was noon by then, and we decided to head towards the water slides in case it started to rain. On the way to the slides we passed through a cool aquarium, which had a moving ‘sidewalk’ where we stood and watched these huge stingrays swimming past. Next for the slides! After storing our stuff at the lockers, we ran around checking out the loot. One slide named ‘The Black Hole’ looked really awesome (it was a long twisty-turny slide that shot you out at the end into a giant funnel where you whipped around in circles until being plopped out through the center) but the sign said it was closed! Sad… we noted the lazy river running between the different slides before grabbing some blue mats and climbing up to a row of multi-colored open slides. We shot down them with awesome speed!
More collections of different slides followed: steep blue and green ones, lots of twisty-turnys, and even steeper and taller slides with large bumps and drops that we had to go on in double-person tubes! Some of the enclosed slides even had multi-colored lights inside them! One of the coolest slides we went on was one where you sat in a double-person tube and went down a steep short drop, but then the wide slide slung you back and forth, going higher and faster across the slide horizontally until you skidded into the water at the bottom. We even spent time lounging in the lazy river, which actually had an enclosed section as well that was ‘haunted’ (although it wasn’t fully operational when we were in it) with creepy displays.
After checking out the beach (which was really nice and calm that day!) for a bit, we heard the wave pool had been started and rushed over to check it out. WOW it was intense! We played around in that for a bit and then decided to do a few final slides before drying off and getting some lunch. But wait! Were those people going up the stairs of ‘The Black Hole’ slide?! Yes they were!! ‘The Black Hole’ had opened up just in time and we got to go down it! It was even freakier than I had imagined it, shooting us out into the strange funnel!
What an awesome day… by then we were quite hungry and we debated getting a set menu at one of the two restaurants in the park (before we realized it was a ‘you must by two set menus’ deal) before deciding to order at the other restaurant. And we were glad we did! Eating right next to the sea with a great view, we chowed down on fried chicken in butter sauce, (yeah, I know, I’m a health fanatic!) fries, and a tuna salad. By now it was almost 5:00 PM and we wanted to spend a bit more time in the arcade. Henk and I played as a team in a tank game, with him having more accuracy but me closing more kills. (An average 11 tanks down to his average 4 tanks! Woot!) Then we drove some race-cars and played a ‘Hammer’ game. Take a look at this sweet game! I took a ride on a rather mild ‘bull’ that couldn’t buck me off, and then we took on aliens in a shooter game.
By now it was almost time for the water show so we bought some popcorn and headed over there. I thought it looked pretty neat (and I liked the music) but Henk wasn’t too impressed because (which was true) we had seen better at Singapore’s FantaSea production. Thus we returned to the arcade and played around a bit more before heading out to the cable cars for our return ride around 9:00 PM. The park would close soon, and we wanted to make sure we’d beat the crowds.
The next morning on the 17th of April we debated doing a city tour, but we were really too tired from the day before to do much. Plus we knew what was on the tour (a large white Buddha and some temples) and decided it wasn’t really worth getting up so early. Plus, group tours weren’t running and we were not gonna pay more than a few dollars to see those sights around town. Thus we decided to stay in… sadly, our evil hostel owners (they turned off the AC on us when we were in the room multiple times and promised wireless internet which was going down constantly during our stay) made us pay for an entire additional night for 6 hours even though their place was pretty empty. We even offered them half, but no it wasn’t good enough. Don’t stay at Viet Hai Hotel if you visit Nha Trang!
That afternoon we went to eat pizza and pasta at Da Fernando and that night we got another sleeper bus (this time a relaxing and spacious ‘double-seater’ sleeper)… sick of always watching movies on sleeper buses, we spent the next few hours just laying and talking instead. With how many new things we’ve learned and done on this trip, we always have an endless array of subjects (deep and shallow) to discuss which is just awesome! On to the Old City of Hoi An!
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