We had been told by Geoff on Con Dao not to expect too much from the diving in Nha Trang. We were told that the reef wasn't that great and the life wasn't as interesting as on Con Dao. This meant we did not go into the dives expecting to witness a pod of dolphins piggy-backing on a whale shark. The dive company here was more commercial as they had much more competition. They also seemed to employ boat captains who were not afraid of the consequences of crashing their boat. As we left the harbour on our first day, we rammed another dive boat out of the way as we attempted to be the first to reach the dive site.

Our first day of diving was good. The reef was colourful, the water was warm and there was plenty of marine life. We saw lots of photogenic reef fish; Moorish Idols, Anemone fish and Damsel fish. Any dive in which you see an anemone fish bite Emma because she got too close with the camera has to go down as a good dive. We also saw some interesting rock formations which created swim throughs for us divers. We swam through a narrow channel and into a small underwater cave filled with fish. Our expectations had certainly risen for the next day.

The water seemed much colder today and the water temperature varied by 7 degrees between the surface and 19m down. Obviously Sainsbury's wetsuits aren't designed for diving. We were once again treated to an abundance of life. We saw lionfish, pufferfish, scorpionfish, eels, nudibranchs and a fish I'd never seen before; a frogfish. We actually saw three of them and they are a quirky fish indeed. They are incredibly ugly, have large bulbous heads, their front fins have developed almost into hands and they are very good at camouflaging themselves. They use their front fins to walk across the rocks. They come in a variety of colours, but sadly not red and white.

As we headed back into harbour after our two days of diving I was left feeling very happy with how it had gone. We'd seen a really nice reef, we had a lovely dive guide and got to see a lot of life. Our original, low expectations helped, but the assault by an anemone fish helped more.