After a few euphoric days in Ho Chi Minh City, we hopped on a plane and moved some 500 kilometers east to the seaside resort of Nha Trang. Our original plan was to spend four nights, but because of some unplanned events caused by Lilly and Alex, we ended up staying for a week. Fortunately, we once again had a lucky hand when picking our home base at the comfortable R&R Apartments so it wasn’t that bad after all :-).
All in all, we were quite unimpressed by Nha Trang – the main reason being crowds of (mostly Russian) tourists that took away a lot of authenticity. Also, street food seemed less rich compared to Saigon. So, what have we been up to?
We rented motorcycles for the first time in Vietnam. Should you need to do the same, make sure to avoid the nasty old guy here. Instead, head straight to True Friends Easy Rider. The scooters we rented from the old guy were in a really bad shape (like junkyard-bad shape) and I am pretty positive that the only thing that saved us from his dirty tricks was the fact that we were super obvious when taking detailed photos of all the damage the scooters came with. True Friends’ bikes are not exactly a first-class material either, but their staff is fair and all issues we encountered (like throttle not working smoothly, gas leakage and non-functional lights) were removed promptly and without any hassle.
We checked out the Tháp Bà Ponagar temple. Cute, but with crowds of tourists, so we did not spend too much time here.
We thoroughly tested the playground on the north side of the main bridge. The kids played with little locals, we kicked some jianzi and had Lulu’s phone stolen. At least we were able to add one more exciting thing to our repertoire – buying a new iPhone :-).
We stuffed ourselves with tons of local goodies: the good old phở, bánh mì baguettes, banh căn egg pancakes, the local version of bún bò nam bộ called bún thịt nướng here down south, or oysters and other shells and seafoods.
We visited the local Institute of Oceanography – the entrance fee is quite low (40k dong for adults and half of that for kids) and we had a blast– there are hordes of fishes and turtles as well as hundreds of creatures in jars filled with formaldehyde.
We hopped on our two-wheeled pieces of junk, rode to the nearby rock formation named Hang Heo and climbed some boulders.
Lilly and Alex got to try riding on self-balancing scooters (they look like a Segway with no handlebars). They had a blast for two whole minutes, after which Lilly fell down and broke her wrist, with Alex following suit within ten seconds. At least we had a chance to test the Vietnamese healthcare system (not bad at all) :-).
We got to meet another Czech family of travelers that is currently going through Vietnam with their two kids. Our kiddos made new friends and we got to know these really nice folks whom we will surely meet again in the future (in Crete, perhaps? :-)).
We switched from junk-class scooters to much better vehicles (Honda Fortune a Yamaha Nouvo), loaded them with all of our luggage and hit the road towards new adventures.
More pictures are available on our Facebook page.