06 August: Nha Trang

Had a pretty awesome day today. Woke up late with no alarm at about 08h30. Got dressed quickly and headed down for breakfast before having a lazy morning in our hotel room repacking our bags and showering.

Our train this evening only leaves at 10pm so a lazy morning was just what we needed.

After checking out, we headed out on the scooter exploring a bit of Nha Trang. We ended up at the Oceanographic Museum. It was pretty weird. All these fish, sharks and turtles in tiny pools (not unlike Vinpearl's Underwater World). But then they had some cool skeletons - perhaps the closest I'll get to seeing a dugong :(


And a room full of jars that reminded me of the Huntertarian Museum. At the less than 1 USD entry fee, I'd recommend it so that hopefully they can take better care of the sea life in their care.

Then we headed to a shopping centre I'd seen yesterday. I do love to explore the grocery shops and see all the different things they sell. We had some delish sushi for lunch at the food court (so cheap!) and then went shopping!

Got Daddio all sorts of weird foodstuffs :D And found a new Fanta to try, as I do. So far I'd only seen Orange here till today. Oh, and I haven't seen a single McDonalds. Although there've been a few KFCs. The Fanta is Sarsi (Sasparilla) flavour. We'd tried a Sarsi Miranda too. The Fanta tasted almost Iron Brew or liquoricey (which I despise).

Also saw Seaweed flavoured Pringles that I managed to convince The Trucker we should try. Haha. Would you believe the chip was actually green?! Surreal. Not too bad taste-wise either, I thought. Oh, and we also bought a pack of Peanut Butter Oreos. Yes, please :)

After that we hit Nha Trang beach for the afternoon. We rented loungers under an umbrella from The Sailing Club and settled in. The afternoon was a blur of snacking on our weird new purchases, reading and swimming in the sea. Fantastic. It sped past tho and at 5pm our time on the loungers was up.


We decided to use the remaining sunlight to do more exploring on the scooter. We headed quite far North out of Nha Trang along the coastal road. Sunset was beautiful. Yes, those are the actual amazing rainbow colours we saw (below)!

Then we went in search of dinner. We had seen quite a few restaurants near where we'd eaten last night so headed back there. First we tried a place called Oasis.

We'd already ordered drinks before we got the food menu, which didn't impress me at all. That and they didn't have any Spring Rolls at all (although there were 3 differnet types on offer according to the menu). They didn't offer much Vietnamese food at all. The Trucker ordered a prawn cocktail starter and we decided to wait and see before ordering mains.

The Trucker didn't like the starter at all so we decided to move on. We ended up at a place called The Why Not Bar. Free beers with our mains :) I had some prawns and he had Cabonara (which is what he'd been eyeing at the first spot too).

We didn't hang around after eating. We headed back to our hotel, with a brief stop at a very unimpressive night market. We faffed around a bit then caught a taxi back to the train station.

Turns out our train was, yet again, an hour late. Less than thrilled.

Travel Planning tip: We booked all our sleeper train tickets online before we went with Vietnam Railway.

Also a little panicked because we got an email about a change in one of our flight times. They've moved out flight from Phu Quoc to Ho Chi Minh City later. Less than ideal because we'd given ourselves 3hrs to switch from the local flight to our international one (in a different terminal) to Siem Reap. Now we have only an hour and a half!

Plus I am even more panicked because I don't think I brought the credit card I used to book the flight with me overseas. I have no idea what will happen. Bugger & Damn. Like I need to spend my next few days worrying :( :(