AspiringNomad

What a crazy 48hrs in Nha Trang! For somewhere that was just meant to be a little stop over to break up the journey between Hoi An and Ho Chi Minh, Nha Trang has been an absolute whirlwind of meeting new friends, jumping into the sea, failing to shotgun a beer and showing off my rendition of American Boy at the Hostel Karaoke night!

Tom and I arrived in Nha Trang at about 6am after a very long bus journey. We were greeted in the dorm by Kevin who was frantically getting his stuff together for a dive tour that he was running late for. Crawling into bed, Kevin left and we managed to catch up on some much needed sleep!

Once Tom and I felt a little less like zombies, we headed down to the beach and paid for some loungers to use throughout the day. Lazing in the shade was hot enough and the sea was just cool enough to take the edge of the heat off! Back in the dorm, Kevin had returned from his tour and we got chatting. The usual travel chit-chat commenced with ‘How long have you been in Vietnam?’ ‘Which direction are you travelling?’ ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Have you taken time off work to be here?’ ‘What do you do for work?’ Turns out Kevin is from Kuala Lumpar but spent a considerable amount of time in the US. He does visual effects for a company that works for big Hollywood films like Spiderman! His modesty about his work was quite refreshing after meeting a few ‘finance guys from London’ throughout my trip who thought their job immediately gave them some kind of status!

We ended up heading down for the free beer at the hostel together where we then met Lyndsey. She is travelling alone and has been to a whopping 83 countries over the years! Tom joined us a bit later on and after sinking two free beers, it was time for me to facetime the family.

After a few calls I was ready to head back down and see what chaos was being created from the Hostel Quiz Night. Turns out that everyone was pretty dead set on going to the local club with the other travellers and hostel reps. In my sober state I reluctantly agreed to join everyone and put my ‘Dance like no ones watching’ shoes on! The club was surprisingly good. They love a laser beam and strobe light in Vietnam, I think they go by ‘more is more’ and so the blinding lights and extremely loud music seemed pretty normal. I held back on the drinking (I know, it’s hard to believe!) and enjoyed watching everyone else having a few too many! I ended up chatting to a group of people who were stunt performers from Canada who performed at the local theme park on jet skis, wake boards and foil boards (which I had to google) which I thought was pretty cool. It wasn’t too long before we were ready to leave and after an obligatory Banh Mi on the way back, I headed straight for bed!

Monday morning rolled around and Kevin, Tom and I got up and ready for the boat party that we booked the day before. I personally was feeling fairly smug that I had not being drinking the night before which was more than can be said for a lot of the other people I was with! We had also convinced Lyndsey to join us on the boat party. At 9am we were whisked off to a port about 20mins away and boarded our modest party boat! About 20 people were all chatting and enjoying the sea breeze as we were taken to our first destination to jump off the roof of the boat and snorkel.

I’d spent the morning chatting with Emma and Liv, who were travelling from London and on the first day of their travels. It turned out to be a group of about 9 of us that seem to have bonded well over drinking beer whilst lounging on ‘floaties’ drifting further and further away from our boat before realising that we actually had to swim the whole way back with a belly full of alcohol! After a few stops at various islands off the coast of Nha Trang, we made our way back to shore.

On returning to the hostel, we decided that we had a bit of sunstroke and needed some rest! All of us, aside from Robbie, the Scottish Hostel rep who had shotgunned about 9 beers on the boat and was technically still ‘working’ needed to be alive enough to hype the rest of the hostel up to join in with the karaoke that was happening in a couple of hours! I’m not quite sure how he was still standing, let alone functioning enough to rally a crowd together, but somehow, he managed it. After a few hours and a Mexican dinner with Tom, Kevin, Emma and Liv we headed to the 2nd floor half way through Robbies rendition of Gravity- Wicked The Muscial. I must admit, it was pretty good, the Scottish accent added something quite unique and when he started jumping from the tables in time for when he sang the words ‘defying gravity’ he really had the crowd going! Unfortunately, the quality of performances dramatically dropped when everyone else had a go! Emma and Liv had finally had enough and left fairly early. Kevin and I were then joined by Aussie Tom. For the sake of not confusing people, I will refer to Aussie Tom by is Instagram name which might pass as the most Australian name I have heard on this trip, Tommy Ando! Tommy Ando was on our boat trip earlier on in the day and wasn’t shy of the karaoke microphone. After feeling like a spoil sport for not joining in, I had a few drinks and was persuaded to have a go myself. Fortunately a lot of people had left before I took center stage so only my nearest and dearest witnessed me butcher American Boy by Estelle. Robbie, as mentioned earlier was still sitting on the bar almost passed out, but I have to hand it to him for still being there!

Tom, Kevin, Tommy Ando, Lyndsey and myself decided to head to the beach for a drink by the sea. We laughed and chatted in a busy beach bar and Kevin bought us a couple of long island iced teas. As much as I loved the company I was in, I could help but eye up the Inflatable Water Park that was peacefully floating just offshore from where we were sitting. Luckily, Tommy Ando had also spotted it and after not much convincing, we all headed into the sea a bit further down the beach. The plan was to enter the water park in stealth mode from the back so no one could see us. We couldn’t believe it, but it worked and we spent about 15mins sliding down the inflatables and climbing up the big pyramids before a man on the beach started yelling something at us. Without any argument, we swam away into the abyss of the dark sea. Luckily, the man wasn’t bothered enough to chase us and we all floated around in the sea for a little while longer chatting and laughing.

Clearly, if you hadn’t realised already, the alcohol had somewhat tainted our judgement and we still thought we should try and get into the club near our hostel. Soaking wet, we walked like drowned rats in the direction of the club. Fortunately, it was closed, and we decided that maybe it was time to call it a night. We dragged ourselves back to the hostel and got to bed at about 4am. As I woke up on Tuesday morning feeling surprising fresh but in a slight panic as I missed my alarm, I had a text from Tom admitting that lovely Lyndsey had convinced him to stay another night in Nha Trang. Some might have been mad about their friend leaving them to stay with a girl for another night, but I was actually quite pleased for him and more than happy to continue on to Ho Chi Minh alone.

At 8:45am my wearing head managed to get me to the bus stop, ready to start the final chapter of Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh.