Vietnam, Nha Trang: Takin' It Easy

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Nha Trang was our third place to visit in Vietnam during our 2-1/2 weeks in the country. The seaside town was much larger than we anticipated and we instantly had such a good feeling about the place when we arrived that we ended up staying an extra night than we had originally planned. The open bus to get from Mui Ne to Nha Trang was uneventful and we arrived in Nha Trang in the evening around 7pm.

Once we stepped off the bus, we were herded like cattle and swarmed by hotel owners with the other open bus passengers, in order to sort out our accommodation for the evening. Many places were offering rooms for under $8 per night, and all of the hotels seemed to have all the luxuries a backpacker could desire, such as air conditioning, private shower with hot water, satellite TV and a refrigerator with a mini-bar.

We ended up taking a room in Hoang Ha Hotel for our first night in Nha Trang, but after we checked in and left our backpacks in the room, we left the hotel in search of better accommodation. After our experience in Mui Ne, we decided that there would always be better options for accommodation that are not linked to the open bus tour companies. We walked around for half an hour and looked at rooms in various places, whereupon we found a newly built hotel called Duy Hung Hotel where the owner and her receptionist offered us a room at a lower price than what we were paying at Hoang Ha. They also offered to place a DVD player in the room we were going to share and that closed the deal for us, as we were looking to spend a few days in the beachside town chilling out and relaxing. We quickly booked the next two nights so that we would not lose the room and such a great arrangement.

After sorting out a hotel, we walked to the main strip of bars and restaurants in Nha Trang to have some dinner. We ate at a restaurant called Truc Linh II (there are three Truc Linh restaurants in Nha Trang) and had delicious Vietnamese food while we shared a bottle of white wine from the region of Dalat, situated in the western part of central Vietnam. The wine was surprisingly light and refreshing and only cost about ₤4 ($7).

The next morning, we decided to leave Hoang Ha Hotel early in order to check into our room at the new hotel and have breakfast there. It was really difficult to check out from Hoang Ha because the woman running the hotel was very inquisitive, and we had been specifically asked by the owner of Duy Hung Hotel not to tell the other hotel owner that we were changing hotels, because Duy Hung was only a few doors down the street and the owners of the two hotels do not get on that well. To be brutally honest, we felt the people running the Hoang Ha Hotel were a bit slimy and sneaky, whereas we thought the staff at Duy Hung Hotel was very genuine and considerate.

We had to think up a story on the spot about why we were checking out of the hotel and the best we could come up with was that we had been offered a place to stay for free in a hotel on the beach with a swimming pool, and that we would be staying with friends there. We finally convinced the hotel that we were leaving and that they should give us our passports back so we could make our exit. Just so you know, all of the hotels in Vietnam took our passports and kept them for our stay, so that the hotels could register our details with the police. Our movements throughout the country were therefore tracked at all times.

The previous evening, we met a couple from Denmark - Mads and Frida - who had also booked a room at Hoang Ha Hotel. We ended up telling them about our hotel search and the deal that we arranged with Duy Hung Hotel, but when they tried to check out of Hoang Ha Hotel the same morning as us, the pressure was too great for them and they ended up keeping their room. Despite not changing hotels, they ended up hanging out with us quite a bit in the lobby of Duy Hung and we all watched DVDs one evening as well.

For our first day in Nha Trang, we decided to hit the beach since it had been awhile since we had a beach holiday – just over a month. Walking along the beach for half an hour or so, we enjoyed a snack during this time which was a large thin circular cracker which had spices baked into it. The snack was like a large version of a prawn cracker and it was very delicious, bought for the cheap price of 10,000 Vietnamese Dong (35p or $0.55). Is it us, or is the name of the Vietnamese currency amusing? The Dong?

Our Lonely Planet guide mentioned a place called “La Louisane”, which is a beachside restaurant with a swimming pool that can be used by anyone who decides to eat there. There are also many sun lounge chairs lining the pool, each decked out with large, soft, thick, comfortable cushions, but to use these for the day you have to pay 20,000 Dong (about 70p or $1.10). At such a bargain, we quickly hired a couple of the chairs and enjoyed the sun, pool and lunch, as well as some Vietnamese Larue beers and other poolside drinks. The view from our chairs was spectacular, too, as we were able to see mountains, the beautiful white sand beach and the sea in the distance.

La Louisiane was so nice that we recommended this to Mads and Frida and on our last full day in Nha Trang, and we had lunch there with them. We ended up getting the spring rolls again, as we enjoyed them during our first visit to the restaurant, despite the heavily used fish sauce present in the dipping sauce. We didn’t end up renting poolside chairs this day, as we wanted to experience something different. Instead, we went to a small water park next door to La Louisiane called Phu Dong Water Park.

The four of us were some of the only people in the park and therefore we were able to ride the slides and take part in other activities without waiting in long lines. There was nothing spectacular in the park but we did have fun with what was on offer.

Kyle’s favourite attraction was a long zipline that we swing out over the water on for several metres before it came to an abrupt halt and dropped us into the water (Dan only made it a few feet as he had trouble hanging onto the slippery handles when he jumped off the platform at the start of the zipline).

Dan’s favourite attraction was a steep downhill slide whereby we slid down in all different directions, forwards and backwards, on our stomachs and our backs (Kyle seemed to get stuck on one of the slides and blamed it on the fact that the slide was “worn out” instead of him just being too grown up for what is more a kid’s slide than an adult’s).

After we left the water park, we headed to the beach with Mads and Frida, to watch all of the Vietnamese locals enjoying the waves and the fresh, cool air. Many children were playing in the surf and sand, and many families were spending time together in the evening. This was a normal occurrence, and the beach gets really busy in the evening once the Vietnamese people finish work for the day.

Food apart from La Louisiane was also very tasty in Nha Trang. On our first full day in the city, we enjoyed Mexican food at El Coyote, whereby we were roped into having a meal by a friendly couple of women standing outside the restaurant offering free shots to anyone who ate there. We each had a shot of tequila after already having several drinks at La Louisiane earlier in the day but luckily stopped after the first round, so we would avoid any hangovers the next morning. Tequila doesn’t agree with either of us and one shot was plenty that day.

Other food we enjoyed in the city was Vietnamese food at Cappucino Restaurant on the main street and another local cafe which was conveniently located nearby our hotel. For breakfast each day, we ate at Duy Hung Hotel and ordered the same delicious things every morning – fried egg with cheese on a large baguette and sweet ice coffee.

If we would have had more time in Vietnam, we could have easily spent over a week in Nha Trang. We had already travelled for over 3 months in Southeast Asia by this point and we needed a few days where we did very little. It helped that Hoa, the receptionist at Duy Hung Hotel, made our stay very enjoyable, as did the owner of the hotel and her family. We received an added bonus by meeting Mads and Frida, whom we would later end up meeting in Hong Kong, and hopefully again in the future.

To leave Nha Trang, we booked ourselves onto an open bus to Hoi An, and this time it would be our first overnight bus in Vietnam and on our trip overall. Just as we were leaving Duy Hung Hotel, Dan suffered a very painful spasm in his back and was unable to carry his backpack due to the intense pain. It was lucky for us that the open buses pick up their passengers at their hotels, so there was no problem getting our gear loaded and boarding the bus. However, an overnight journey on a bus, which is normally uncomfortable anyway, meant that Dan had a not so pleasant trip to Hoi An.

Kyle’s neck was acting up that evening, too, and trying to sleep in a bus chair was also uncomfortable for him. Having said all of this about the uncomfortable journey, we saved a night’s accommodation by taking an overnight bus and we also did not lose a day travelling, so we would definitely recommend travelling this way to other travellers. Many more overnight bus and train journeys will be in store for us, too, and we will just be well equipped with Paracetamol (that’s the same as Tylenol for the Americans reading this) to take away the aches and pains.