Nha Trang

We woke up and decided we should attempt to do something vaguely cultural today before getting on the loungers, though only after breakfast. We went to a cafe called Iced Coffee i.e. Matt's dream location. I had a Vietnamese hotdog. I'm not exactly sure what made it Vietnamese, it was still just a frankfurter in a bun just with a bit of chilli sauce. We attempted to find the bus which would take us to Po Nagar Cham Towers. After about 30 minutes of walking around in the 'too-hot-for-pasty-northerners' heat we gave in and got a taxi.

The towers were built in the 8th century by the Cham people in dedication to a Goddess. They were restored in the 1990s as they'd gone pretty much to ruin. I'm not sure the visit was quite worth it but I think we would have felt bad if we spent the whole day on the beach. The photos of the site in the 30s compared to now were the most interesting part. And we did get to wear foxy grey cover jackets to hide our shoulders and knees.

We taxi'd back and then spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach. I drank coconut water from a fresh coconut and finished watching The Crown whilst Matt went back into the waves. The most amusing part was watching the people who take payment for the sun loungers getting super strict, especially at the end of the day when people were trying to negotiate the price. The sun lounger men always won and even double handed shoo'd a couple of women who tried perching on one. Twice today people have also thought we were Russian and given us Russian drinks menus or tried to talk to us in Russian.

After some stressful road crossing (I will be so happy to be back to the zebra crossing and green men of UK roads) we went for dinner at a delicious Indian restaurant called Ganesh. Emergency red wine was called for to recover from the roads - its like playing real life Frogger. Then it was time for another sleeper train. I like that at Nha Trang station there's no clever arrival board, just a screen where they can link a computer to and display a word document telling you the expected time (see photos). We spent our time at the station praying for a better experience than last time and overall it was, though poor Matt couldn't really sleep anyway. Our bunk mates were quiet and respectful and the cabin was clean-ish. Though the horrible shiny gold blankets which made you sweaty and slid on the floor were less pleasant. We arrived at 5am to hit the hotel for a bit more sleep. That's it for trains now and almost it for Vietnam. Just Ho Chi Minh left to go.Read more