Nha Trang

Another bus ride - this time 12 hours. But again a good one. I was able to stretch out over the entire 5 seats in the back. No one was throwing up, the air conditioning was working, there was no bad Vietnamese music blasting over the speakers - oh happy day.

Nha Trang reminded me of Atlantic City - a town built around a beach but in this case just a much more beautiful beach. We spent 2 days just chilling out under our big umbrella sipping drinks, reading and swimming.







Michael had a haircut in a rather interesting place. The place was very tiny but held about 6 employees, 3 hair chairs, and 4 dogs. What was somewhat confusing is what the employees were employed to do? Only one seemed to cut hair while the rest either napped, applied make-up, or played rocks, paper, scissors. Later we saw a man come out from behind a beaded curtain and slip a girl some money, which brought us to the conclusion that Michael was getting his hair cut in a whore house. Probably not the last time that will happen here. My favorite part was the dog eating some meat scraps under the hairdresser's feet during the hair cut. Unfortunately the dog can't be seen here....but it's right under her feet.



Nha Trang also offers some "electronic arouse" services. Unclear exactly what this is but I thought it worth a picture.



We also did the traditional booze cruise as it's the only way to see any of the islands around here. The snorkeling and swimming was not great as it was pretty choppy out. What was good was the onboard entertainment - the self-proclaimed boat "boy band." In truth they were more like a man band as I think everyone was over 30. They sang a number of tunes, and had a guitar player who wore a motorcycle helmet during the entire trip.





My experience on these types of trips is that it's usually the frat boy types who are the most out of control. Not so here - it was the 2 Dutch women (see one in photo below) in their 50's who were dancing around in bikinis, drank everyone else under the table...and even danced on the table. They were the main entertainment.



After a pretty good and plentiful lunch we all jumped in the drink to have a drink - red wine with pineapple. The wine was awful and how anyone finished even a single glass is beyond me.







Other excitement in Nha Trang - a 4 inch cockroach in our room. This was bewildering as the hotel is very new and clean and was actually quite nice. I saw the cockroach on day 1 as it was trying to climb into Michael's bag. I screamed, we/Michael chased it for a while, and then we lost it. Needless to say it was a long night for me as I kept imagining the cockroach climbing on my face. Michael, however, seemed to sleep fine. The next day upon returning from the beach I found him, the cockroach, trying to climb into my bag. After screaming again it climbed into Michael's laundry bag where we trapped it, took it outside, and that was that.

Nha Trang is a very stylish town as noted by these bathroom tiles that I found not only in our hotel room but also in a fancy restaurant in town - classy.