Cham Towers

Trying to take advantage of our last day in Nha Trang to check out the sights, Andrea and I decided to rent some bicylcles and vist Cham Towers as well as pay a visit to local market for some lunch. The bike ride was pleasant since this city is pretty much flat, but there was the rain. Fortunateley the air temperature is still somewhere in the low to mid 70's and the rain is not cold, but it is wet. Even though we had our rain ponchos I still got plenty wet. The towers were impressive, but only three towers have survived the elements and the war. We got a tour guide who gave us a brief history of the towers and their usage.





After leaving the towers we headed for the market and were greeted by a large labyrinth of stalls. We've learned to be more selective with the food we see since our experience in Hanoi, so now we only buy one item to split and see if its worth getting a second one. This proved handy when we bought this yummy looking fried banana. It was more of a plantain and pretty starchy. Still good, but not quite up to our expectations. As we ventured into the market we checked out our options. When we saw this stall that had the most interesting selection we sat down. Thinking that we would be able to pick out the toppings for our bowl of rice Andrea grabbed the guide book prepared to figure out how to avoid the organ meats. But as I was away getting the drinks, it turned out we were just given an assortment of toppings from veggies to different types of meat. But as we tried them it turned out they weren't meat at all, but a tasty assortment of veggie fake meats. The fake chicken even had a fake bone (or ventricle) made out of a hard piece of pasta. Aside from the chicken our plate included fake fish, fake liver and fake bologna. Well I wasn't sure how fake the bologna was since neither of us really wanted bologna fake or real. Some mysteries are better left alone.

Night out in party town

After a long day of snorkeling out off the coast of Nha Trang, we thought we should take advantage of the fact that we were staying in a party town, as designated by our guidebooks. So we decided to check out the bar scene. After having a beer at the Guava I was already feeling a bit tipsy. This was the most active bar that we had seen and it looked pretty swanky. Andrea and I knew it was going to be a wild and crazy night the minute we finished our debating whether one of the light fixtures is using an incandescent or halogen light. We did hit up another bar on the suggestion of one of the dive instructors from earlier in the day that we met at the Guava. The other bar definitely looked hopping. But aside from one other person I think Andrea and I were the oldest people there by at least 5 years and possibly 10. Ouch! We had our "Smile" a fruit smoothie with rum, we played a game of foozeball, connect four and enjoyed our complimentary mojito. We were out of there by 11pm...so much for a crazy night on the town.

Oh and I learned that divers get a high similar to getting stoned..so now I see why its so popular..but still I have no interest in it.

Snorkeling in the rain

I was a bit concerned that trying to snorkel in the waters around Nha Trang would be minimally interesting at best. Since the waters around the beach were a bit turbid I figured there wouldn't be much to see. But after getting out to one of the islands off Nha Trang in the marine protected area we could see the waters starting to take on their greenish blue color. We got into our wetsuits and prepared to get in. I jumped into the water and started to see what I could find under the sea. I didn't see much of anything. But as I headed closer to the rocks seemingly out of nowhere a school of small blue fish appeared. Then more an more fish until I could see the colorful coral beneath me. Though I never did see the clown fish (no Nemo) I was still impressed with everything that I saw. I'm just amazed with all the colors of the fish and the coral. I was, however, a bit disappointed to see a stretch of dead and dying coral. It was such a contrast to the beautifully colorful part of the sea.

I only snorkeled for a total of 2 hours and though I thought that would hardly be enough time, I was very much ready to head back to dry land. The coolest part of the whole experience was how calm and tranquil it felt while I was under the water. Even though all around me the currents were pushing me towards the rocks and the rains started to get more and more intense. As we headed back to the mainland I was pretty exhausted, and I had to fight off a bit of nausea from the rocking boat and the diesel fumes.

Beaching it in Vietnam

Since it appears we are traveling through Vietnam in the rainy season, we were really taking a chance at trying to check out the beach in Nha Trang, which is billed as having some of the best beaches in Vietnam. Well if that is true, I don't think I'll be hitting up any more beaches in this country. Though I think its more a factor of the rains which bring in debris and any thing else that is on the streets onto the beach and into the surf so the water takes on a brownish tinge and the sand is littered with all sorts of debris from palm fronds to plastic bits. We were lucky enough to have had a clear morning when we arrived from our overnight bus trip from Hoi An, so we still went down to the beach. After finding a nice spot under a palm tree we settled in and tried to nap on the beach. But we received an onslaught of merchants trying to sell us bootleg books, and sunglasses. Though we clearly had both these items and it didn't seem to deter the vendors. At first we tried being polite saying no thank you, but that just seemed to encourage them to further engage us and try to sell us other stuff we didn't want. We finally ended up shooing them away without much of an acknowledgment. And it seemed that Andrea was taking more of the vendors.