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Nha Trang - Memento
It was about 5 hours to Nha Trang and we had booked a slightly posher resort about 20k out of town as it was Ruby's birthday while we would be there and we had also heard that Nha Trang itself wasn't the most cultural place to stay, it is mainly a tacky party town.
We were given a big warm welcome to the Memento Resort by a nice lady on reception and had been upgraded (without breaking any sinks this time!!) to one of the 'cottages' which was lovely. A nice twin double bed room with all the mod cons. It was rustic and homely, made out of clay and mud with a bamboo and palm leaf roof. The hut was right next to the pool! After a nice dinner we tootled off to bed and watched some very interesting Vietnamese TV . . . All the films are dubbed by the same Vietnamese monotone lady with all other sounds muted in the background. We found it quite strange as we knew the typhoon from the Philippines was headed for Vietnam any day, we had the tv on to try to understand the weather forecasts, but in between the weather forecasts they were showing the film 'The Perfect Storm'?!!
The next morning we woke to bright sunshine and had a lovely morning swim. After breakfast the hotel staff told us that we should go to the local market on their bikes. The bikes were hilarious! Mine only had one gear and one break which proved interesting! The market was the smallest and most remote that we had been to. We were the only travellers there and people seemed really surprised and happy to see us. We bought some pomelo's which look like green oranges and taste like every kind of citrus fruit you can imagine, super delicious! We cycled around the area for a while waving and shouting hello to the children who were really excited to see us. The countryside was stunning, we were staying in a lush green valley surrounded by huge mountains. The rest of the day was spent chilling by the pool sunning ourselves. We met a nice couple and had dinner with them at the resort, after food, chats and some more terrible pool playing we headed to bed.
The next day was Ruby's Birthday! Still no typhoon and the sun was shining! It looked as if the typhoon was starting to drop off and taking a course much further north than us which was a relief! We hired a taxi for the day and went to a Mud Spa as a birthday treat. We had such a great time. We didn't realise but the guy who owned Memento (where we were staying) also owned I Resort which is a newer mud spa and less known than the one in all the guide books it was perfect. We started off having our own private mud bath which was like a giant stone bath where you get in and they turn on the tap and the fresh hot mud pours in. It was really weird but fun, we soaked ourselves for 20 minutes before getting out to have a hot mineral power shower. Then we sat in a giant wooden tub and this time they filled it with hot water and added some herbal mixture which made us feel like we were sitting in a giant cup of tea!! After that we made our way from pool to pool, all filled by the hot natural springs, some of them with waterfalls, jets or slides! Included in our ticket was a free meal and we had a really yummy dish which was fish balls covered in dried green rice (kind of like green rice crispies!). When we were feeling pooled out and pruney we got changed and called our taxi to take us into Nha Trang. We wandered round a bit but there wasn't much to see so we found a nice bar to have a birthday coconut and a couple of celebratory cocktails. We went back to the resort for dinner as we had seen the menus and were excited to treating ourselves to crocodile and ostrich! They were really really tasty and it was nice to have a special birthday meal. Memento also gave us some home made 'banana wine' on the house for Ruby's Birthday which tasted a lot like a sweet whiskey! We played a few more pool games with the nice couple we had met the evening before. All in all it had been a fab day.
Considering this resort was the most expensive we had stayed it it was quite funny that we (mainly I) were kept awake most nights by what we thought were rats squeaking and scratching in the roof! We weren't too bothered as we thought they were just in the roof but on that last night I was woken up by one of them falling off the wall/ceiling onto my arm!!!! Luckily we had mosquito nets tucked under our mattress's but it still made me jump! I completely forgot about it until the next morning when I went into the bathroom for a a wee and a mouse ran over my feet and was trying desperately to get out the door! Ruby laughed at me so much as I was 'squaking incoherently' according to her as I was mid wee and didn't know what to do with the mouse on my feet!! It was pretty funny and I assume that he was the guy that woke me up in the middle of the night! We had a nice chilled morning by the pool to make the most of it before checking out and heading back to Nha Trang. After leaving our bags at the place we were catching the next bus we had a nice wander along the seafront. Ruby and I spent the afternoon finding a nice local place to eat and then chilled out on the beach people watching and sunbathing. We had dinner at the place we went the day previously for our cocktails, the guy there was so nice and he showed us how to eat Bhan Xeo correctly by rolling the pancake up in there amazingly strong salad leaves and dipping it in the chilli fish sauce. The bus picked us up at 7pm to go to Hoi An.
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