Nha Trang and 4 islands

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So after arriving in Nha Trang last night at 10pm, it was to bed, with an early wakeup this morning.

We booked onto a 4-island tour that was really neat. We left at 8:30am, got packed into a bus like sardines, and taken to the boat. A bit crowded, but not too bad. The guy running the show was a real comedian. Entertaining. We went out a ways, then stopped for swimming/snorkelling. The snorkelling wasn't as good as Thailand was(and will be again!), but not bad. It was really sad to see how much garbage was in the water. Between the tourists and the Vietnamese themselves, it was pretty bad. Beautiful sunny weather, and we used lots of sunscreen!! Boated a bit more, and stopped for lunch/karaoke show. The show was put on by our guide, and other workers on the boat, it was a lot of fun. Then we had "happy hour", when wine, pineapple and cigarettes were all free!! It wasn't GOOD wine, but it didn't matter that much! We jumped off the boat, all had life preservers, and floated around Loi(our guide), who was sitting on his own life preserver, pouring out the wine. It was crazy. Just a bunch of people floating in a big group, drinking wine in the sun. He passed bottles to people on the outskirts so everyone got what they wanted! Not something you'd see in Canada!!(although Sean and I have been discussing how to turn our raft at camp into a floating Island Lake bar--think we could get licensed?!! hah)

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Then we boated a bit more, and got to a beach, where they had all kinds of water sports.... and a volleyball net!!! I haven't played since Canada!!, so i was really excited. It was REALLY windy, but a lot of fun. People kept rotating in and out, and there were enough competitive players to make it good, and even firsttimers to make it fun! In the middle of the game it started raining, but we kept playing. So much fun. Then back to the harbour and to our hotel, where I am right now! Wish we could stay longer here, but we're just a bit(a lot) too short on time(if anyone is planning this trip, you need AT LEAST 3 weeks for Vietnam)...Hopefully I can get some pictures up, to make up for the words I didn't type, but if not, they're coming. We have a really (crazy) ambitious schedule ahead for the next week and a bit, so it might be a few days before the next post... Here's our schedule:

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14th: arrive Saigon, find hotel, book (and go on) tour of cu chi tunnels, book tour for Mekong delta 15th:mekong delta by boat, over night somêwhere in the delta, continue to Phenom Penh(Cambodia) next day 16th: arrive Phenom Penh, fínd hotel, do some touristing 17th: more touristing in Phenom Penh, bus to Siem Reap 18th, 19th: all day at Ankor Wat 20th: Fly to Thailand, stay overnight in Bangkok 21st: night train to Chiang Mai 22nd: overnight at the Elephant Nature Park 23rd: night train back to Bangkok 24th: arrive Bangkok, maybe fly to Phuket, overnight in Phuket 25th: to Ko Phi Phi, where we'll cool our heels for at least 3 days. Oh yeah, if you guys really need to get ahold of me, or care if I reply, you can try e-mailing me at (my yahoo username)@gmail.com. Hopefully you can figure that out--I don't really want to post my actual e-mail here(although it's probably on the page somewhere anyway). Just got a gmail account, and I'm going to try it out--I've heard that it isn't affected by the internet issues(some sites work, and some don't)involving yahoo and hotmail(Sean still can't get into his e-mail, although my yahoo is working for now). To summarize: I will still be using yahoo, but might not be able to access it easily, so if you really need to get ahold of me, use gmail!