Ho An to Nha Trang

Friday, March 22nd 2013, Nha Trang Vietnam

 Yesterday, we lounged around the rooftop pool for a few hours then walked back down to the restaurant on the riverfront where we'd eaten the night before. We had a table right out on the steps.

 This is the view from our table. The Vietnamese lady sculling the tourist across the river looks like she's pretty old but she can certainly handle her boat. After another good dinner we walked back to our hotel and had a cooling shower. A van arrived about 6:15 pm to take us to the Sinh Tourist office to exchange our bus travel voucher for another piece of paper and 2 luggage tags. Then the van drove us to a big parking lot where eventually there were about 20 of us waiting for our bus. There are some built-in inefficiencies in a lot of ticket handling here that remind me of Russia. You exchange one piece of paper for another piece of paper (which the office ladies almost forgot to give me), then you sign it, take it with you and hand it to the driver. There's no way to just buy a ticket. You have to buy a voucher to exchange for a ticket. The train was like this too. Maybe there's a reason for all this duplication of effort but I don't know what it is. In Russia, we had to take the luggage voucher to the man with the red stamp but then no-one ever looked at the voucher again. Strange but all you can do is go along.

 Here's Anita in the lower berth of the sleeper bus. Sleeper buses have 3 rows like this with 2 narrow aisles between. You're almost flat with your head on a reclining cushioned surface with pillow, while your feet are under the headrest of the person in front of you. It's a standard highway bus that fits 38 people this way, plus moderately disgusting toilet.

Here I am enjoying my upper berth above Anita. We left the parking lot at 7:15 pm and arrived in Nha Trang about 6:00 am. The bus stopped briefly for gas and to drop off some parcels but there was no opportunity for passengers to get off enroute. We did manage to get some sleep so it wasn't too bad. The bus cost $26 each, took us on an 11 hour drive to Nha Trang and saved us a night in a hotel, so it's very economical. Our hotel is about a 6 minute walk from the Sinh Travel Office. Sinh Travel operates a lot of these kind of "open tour" buses which are mostly, but not always, used by tourists.
Luckily, we were able to check into our room at the Golden Summer Hotel as soon as we got off the bus. After a shower, we found a restaurant for breakfast (total price 8,000 VND or $4). We found an ATM to stock up on a little more cash. Then we bought happy hour supplies, water and a bus ticket for next Wednesday to Dalat. We have our routine down pretty well by now.
After applying liberal amounts of sunscreen, we headed to the beach for the rest of the day.

 Our hotel, costing us $30 per night (including breakfast), is a 5 minute walk from the beach. Nha Trang is a city of over 300,000 but the front of it is a huge, wide beach stretching for 6 km. There are no hotels right on the beach. There's a beachfront road, a beautiful park and promenade, and then the beach. The islands offshore and the hills of the Central Highlands behind the town make a beautiful beach scene.

There are lots of tourists in town, including a lot of Russians, but the beach is so huge it's not crowded.

 This afternoon we spent several hours on the beach. The water is clean and warm and there's always a nice sea breeze to keep the heat and humidity manageable. We're thinking we can enjoy this quite nicely for 5 days.