Nha Trang

There was one highlight of our visit to the Vietnamese Riviera - our day trip to neighbouring islands. We did not expect much of it since we were hoarded on a boat together with 30 other tourists early in the morning (also locals - Vietnam seems to have developed local tourism quite well). The visit to the first island with an aquarium full of weird fish generally made us feel quite depressed as the trip seem not to develop in any way that would seem like fun. Our next stop where we went snorkling did not improve our mood. Since there were several boats like ours docked around the sea life moved further and we could not see too much. It was good though to be in the water for a while. Lunch on the boat was the time when the first brakethrough took place - the food was good. Then after lunch something extraordinary happend. The whole vietnamese crew stood up and performed - one guy playing drums (or to be more precise something that resembled a drum plus two buckets), another playing guitar that remembers probably the sixties and our "captain" singing in Viet-English and Viet-Spanish. Their performance was great! Then the crew gave an ultimatum to all passengers. Basically everyone had to jump to the water. I had no idea what was going on since I have some trouble with understanding Viet-English and forgot to read the leaflet describing our trip before we got onto it. So we jumped in and found out that a floating bar with a crate of Vietnamese has "opened" right next to our boat. We had to "dock" around it with our feet on the bar while floating in the water and basically got flooded with literes of Vietnamese blueberry wine by the "floating bar tender". Saying "No" was forbidden and every offence of such type was punishable with wine poured straight from the bottle into you.

The next hour we chilled on the beach nearby to recover...Whole thing was very entertaining...

Our stay in Nha Trang coincided with the Name Day of Rita. We have celebrated it on the beach in a very nice restaurant with a pool while playing chess and drinking Mojito. Rita had shown her mastery and won for the second time. This time however in a very sophisticated, fast and smooth way. Respect! - I think I should not let her read the advanced chess book which we have bought somewhere on the way otherwise I will have to get used to the feeling of getting swiftly beaten...

Nha Trang as such has a nice beach, lots of hotels for very good money ($7 gets you a very nice room with AC, minibar, hot shower etc.) and nice restaurants. In general if you are looking for peace this is not a place to be. If you are after some action like diving or to some extent partying you have found the place.