Day 97 - Nha Trang, Mui Ne

27.10.09

Up at a still dark 4.30 and I pack my bags and am ready and on the beach at 5.30am ready to catch the sunrise, which I'm hoping will be worth the early effort. It appears I have arrived to the beach late, not because of the sunrise, but because the beach is the most rammed that I have seen it so far. There are Vietnamese people exercising, swimming in the sea, playing football, pacing up and down the beach and basically just doing their normal morning exercise routines, but just amazingly early. By the time it hits 7-ish they will all be gone and the beach will be empty again until all us tourists rise up out of bed and get down there. It's such an unexpected sight to see them all up and about so early, but is quite cool, and the sunrise, my whole reason for being up so early was nice as well.

At 6.30, my bus leaves for Mui Ne and it pulls into the one road town around 1-ish. Mui Ne, is a small town on an epic stretch of beach that must be at least 9 miles long and forms a huge circular arc. The town is mainly located at one end and then a road leads around the beach all the way to the far end and is dotted with small resorts and hotels with beach side bungalows that are literally on the beach. I walk for about 40 mins along the beach to the hotel where Clare and Lee are staying and get my $10 room which is all of 15 seconds walk from the sand.

Day 96 - Nha Trang

26.10.09

Clare and Lee have gone on to Mui Ne today and so I'm left to my own devices on this sunnier day. Hitting some pre work Geneva admin and emails entertains my morning before a walk over to the beach to laze around in the afternoon. My plan is to relax and try and even out some of my tan which has me sporting vicious tan lines where I have been wearing t-shirts in the sun over the past two months. I'm not sure how successful I will be in the remaining 6 days away but it's worth a try. Once again, the beach is rammed to the rafters and I can't move for the people stumbling over me as I relax and read some Ernest Hemingway in a very sophisticated beach bumming session.

I fully intend to go for some food tonight but end up finding that there is a TV in my room and after not watching TV in 3 months I end up watching 4 films one after another until the early hours of the morning. Not long to go now before I'm back home. It's sad to think I have seven nights left away and then I will be back home in the UK. The journey has been so good and I've met so many people and experienced so many different things. I'm not sure if I want it to continue or I'm just sad that it is coming to an end, as I do want to be back home and am ready to leave.

Day 95 - Nha Trang

25.10.09

Rain rain rain is the order of the day and the more than inviting weather is putting any kind of beach action thoroughly off limits. I sit down in the hotel lobby and drink tea with some of the hotel staff and also Clare and Lee, two people who I have been stalking all the way down from Hanoi, Hue and Hoi An. Vietnam has such a treaded route from north to south, that if you set off from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh or vice versa, you will see the same faces at nearly every stop. People travel the same routes and stay roughly the same amount of time in each place and so you are guaranteed to bump into them. As outside activities are being thoroughly rained off me and Clare take a walk to a photography gallery at the other end of town. It's by a famous Vietnamese photographer who shoots only in black and white and never in digital. He develops all his own photographs in his home studio in the back of his Kitchen. His photos are very good and capture different scenes from Vietnamese life, a boy running across the back of buffaloes, pictures of very old Vietnamese women looking weather worn and spaced out and one prize wining piece of a child crying are amongst his best for me.

Come evening time we eat out in a Vietnamese restaurant that serves food the size of fish pellets, so luckily I ordered two mains in anticipation and then have a few beers until a respectable 11pm. Hopefully tomorrow will bring better weather and some sun and sand time.

Day 94 - Nha Trang

24.10.09

Pulling into Nha Trang at a bright 6.30am and still the local population are up and about doing their business and it seems as if they have been up for hours already. Avoiding the 'recommended' hotel that the bus drops you off outside (for a healthy commission no doubt), I walk to a hotel that was recommended to me by some people I met in Hoi An and manage to bag a lovely $5 room. A quick walk around the local area and a pop into a super market yields some water and a sizable pack of cashew nuts, which I manage to polish off in more or less one go.

Before I venture to the beach I want to walk and check out the main temple in town and it's large white seated Buddha. The questions is will it compare to the colossal Leshan Buddha in Sichuan, or the massive bronze Lantau Island Buddha in Hong Kong... not quite there, but it's still nice and it's pure white construction is radiant in the bright sun.

Walking to one end of the beach which probably stretches at least a couple of miles, the golden sand and warm water is very inviting. It's just a shame that the beach was rammed to the rafters full of people... or not.