After entering the beautiful river that leads up to Nha Trang the ship anchored in the centre of the river and passengers were ‘tendered’ to port. For the uninitiated this means they use the ships lifeboats to ferry people to shore. They call the lifeboats ‘tenders’ and any port they can’t moor at is called a ‘tender port’. On arriving, the shuttle bus took us on a 30 minute drive to the Dan Markets in Nha Trang. Enroute it was easy to see why Nha Trang is regarded as the riviera of Vietnam. It has turquoise blue waters along the shoreline which has yellow sand, protected somewhat from open ocean by small islands off the coast (hence not a surfing beach) and is littered with water activities. It is somewhat similar to Byron Bay.

The Dan Markets were again miles of stalls, many selling the same wares which were all covered by plastic sheeting making alleys under the sheeting for customers to walk along to shop. Motorbikes and bicycles were also using the alleyways so you had to be constantly watching for traffic in the restricted space of the alleyways. There seemed to be more stalls than customers and like Phu My I wondered how people would make any money out of their businesses.

We had been warned about the pedicab drivers and to only take an organised pedicab tour. We were asked at least 50 times is we wanted a pedicab ride, but they looked older and even less enticing than the tuk tuks in Bangkok so we just waled to and from the market.

Again the weather was hot and muggy with humidity still running at 100% (the barometer seems stuck at this number over here).We took a cab (US $5) to one of the resorts along the shore front called the Louisiana Brew House. This is a 4 star resort (though I don’t think they had accommodation) that has a microbrewery as well as a swimming pool and great open air covered restaurant. If you didn’t want to use the pool it was only 50 steps on the sand to the beach.

As soon as we were seated they brought us ice cold towels to clean our hands and cool us down. Very refreshing! This is something we could in our hot parts of Australia more often. We had a great lunch and I had a Vietnamese Pho (authentic soup) with 3 types of mushrooms. It was really fresh and fragrant with the herbs you added just before eating. Their beers were pretty ordinary but overall the atmosphere and experience was nice on a hot summers day. Many of the crew were spending their day ashore here poolside. Admission to the restaurant area is free but if you want to use the pool I think they charge around US$3.

We only used US$ in Vietnam and didn’t carry any ‘dong’. US$ are more convenient and seem to be accepted everywhere. Considering US$1 is equal to around 20,000 dong. Our lunch with drinks at the Louisiana came to around 600,000 dong or US$30. There are a lot of resorts here and the market seems to be mostly from Russian tourists. In fact some of the resorts are exclusive to Russians. It was a great little seaside village and thankfully we weren’t harassed by persistent salespeople and beggers as in Phu My.

We also had free wifi for the few hours we were there so those of you on viber would have received a text and we also updated our blog. Pictures and movies loaded quickly so it was a worthwhile resort stop.

When we were ready to leave there was a group of taxis out the front, with, as usual a taxi natzi. We negotiated to go back to the dock for 5US$. When we got out of the taxi and paid him he asked for more money – they try everything. Luckily we were where we needed to be so we gave him $5 and left. The real fare should have been about 1US$ so we thought 5 was a good deal anyway and we were very happy to pay that. The taxis were not allowed in the area near the tenders so we walked through the local market, looking for a watch for Paul. I tried one watch on, but it was so hot from sitting in the sun it almost burnt my arm. We didn’t buy a watch!!!

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