Days 142-146 – Vietnam

February 24-28, 2010 – Nha Trang, Vietnam

Ahhhh….Nha Trang.

Just what the doctor ordered… warmth, sunshine and a beautiful beach.

After a long and partially restful ride on the night bus, Eric and I arrive to find a beach city. It’s a little bigger than we expected but it’s exactly what we are looking for. We find a hotel located about 200 metres from the beach and settle in for a good five full days of fun in the sun.

We spend three days relaxing on the beach and walking around the city. The other two days we go snorkeling.


Unfortunately, a lot of the organized snorkel trips around Nha Trang are really just glorified booze-cruises…

The boat company takes you to a number of different areas along the bay, but when you get there, they launch the floating bar and crank the music which scares away the fish. And would you believe it? Most of the snorkeling equipment is broken… sorry about that. Guess you can’t really snorkel today – you might as well have a drink. By the way, drinks are not included in the price… that’ll be extra money please.

But we discover a company – Vu’s Adventure Tours – that offers snorkeling trips where they actually take you snorkeling. It’s advertised as the “Non-Party Snorkeling Trip” – no booze, no loud music, no hidden fees – and we immediately sign up.

They drop us off at some amazing spots for snorkeling – the coral is stunning and there are fish everywhere. We see parrot fish, angel fish, puffer fish, clown fish, starfish, plus many others I can’t name. I even see an eel and a sea snake! At one point a school of at least a hundred fish swims by me – it was like something you’d see in “the Blue Planet”. We stay in the same areas for a couple hours at a time, so there’s plenty of opportunity to snorkel, sunbathe, dive off the boat and just relax.


And the lunch they provide is to die for – grilled fish, grilled prawns, marinated squid & vegetable salad, fried tofu with long-beans, yellow noodles with papaya salad, spring-rolls, angel-food cake and so much fresh fruit, we ended up taking some of it home.


The trip was so much fun that Eric and I decide to do it again, so we sign up for two days later.

For dinner, we discover two amazing places.

The first is a Bo Ne restaurant. Bo Ne is a fried egg with a piece of steak and fried onions, topped with a chili-tomato sauce and served piping hot in a cast iron skillet. You mix it all up and eat it with fresh vegetables and crusty bread. The fun thing about this place is that it’s only a restaurant at night. By day, it’s a carwash… seriously. We discovered this the hard way – we walked past it in the evening and thought it would be a great place for breakfast, but when we went back the next morning, there was no Bo Ne to be found – just a freshly-waxed Lexus. At about 4:00pm, they clear out the cars, spray the place down and hang up the hoses. Then they wheel out the stove and set up the tables – talk about an amazing use of space! The Bo Ne was so good here we brought our first snorkeling group with us on our return visit.


The other treasure we find is located on the sidewalk across from the beach, about 5 minutes from our hotel. This “restaurant” consists of a man with a charcoal grill and buckets of fresh seafood packed on ice – you pick your seafood, he weighs it and then grills it up. The garnish is a simple mixture of lime juice, diced chili peppers and green onions, a bit of garlic and chopped peanuts. Then you just sit at a little table on the sidewalk, enjoy your meal and watch the world go by. We have scallops and clams on the half-shell and a whole lobster – the scallops are so good we go back for seconds our last night in Nha Trang.


After being land-locked for almost 2 months, Nha Trang was exactly what we needed.