Another 12 hour overnight bus journey brought us 600km from Hoi An to Nha Trang on the coast in the south of Vietnam. Nha Trang is one of Vietnam’s popular beach resort locations, attracting those whose idea of the perfect holiday is to recline by a resort pool for several days, swimming, sunbaking, sipping cocktails, eating seafood dinners and having the occasional foot or back massage. How awful! But come to think of it, after 3 months on the road, not always in comfort, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad so we called in for a couple of days to check it out.Nha Trang has beautiful sandy beaches and several offshore islands in the warm waters of the South China Sea. We took a boat out to Mun Island and snorkeled for an hour over the island’s fringing coral reef, home to 300 species of coral and 200 species of reef fish. Although it was not in the same league as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, we saw many colourful corals and fish. On the boat we met and chatted with Della and Martin from St Albans just north of London. They retired 9 years ago and have spent much of their time since then travelling around the world. They certainly appeared to be enjoying themselves and were amongst the first to plunge into the ocean to snorkel over the coral.
Back on the mainland we went for a long stroll along the beach, stopping at the trendy Louisiane Brewhouse to try their in-house brewed beer, coffee and chocolate cake. Local women hovered around the perimeter of the Brewhouse hawking fresh lobsters, drinks and coconuts. We did a deal on two lobsters that the seller grilled for us over a bowl of smouldering charcoal slung from one end of the pole she carried across her shoulder (a bag of lobsters was slung from the other end). A little further on we bought fresh coconut and crunchy baguettes, and along with a few other things, dinner was literally in the bag.
During a brief rest stop back along the beach towards our hotel I glanced to the right to see Lee Tuan with a rather satisfied look on her face cracking the coconut on the head with a brick, then to the left to see a group of teenage girls who appeared to be army cadets or the like practising their assault rifle skills on the sand. The collective impact of these two images was vaguely unsettling and I was on my best behaviour for the next hour until the effect wore off. Back at the hotel we took our produce to the top floor terrace overlooking the ocean and prepared our sunset lobster dinner.
The following morning at 7.30am we were back on a bus, this time bound for Dalat in the Central Highlands seven hours to the south-west. Dalat is a small city of about 130,000 with French-influenced architecture. To us it seemed somewhat similar to Sapa though less impressive and less interesting. We walked around the bustling morning market that left us in no doubt that Dalat must be the fruit capital of the country. The market generally was overflowing with fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee, flowers, meats and hardware items. We’ve seen markets that were larger, but rarely so well-stocked. The Dalat countryside must have many skilled and efficient farmers.
