Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
We apologise for the lack of blogs recently but the reason for this is that we got stuck in Nha Trang for 12 days! Whoopsie! We shall now explain our reasons for this...
We will start off with us leaving Phnom Penh after Laura got her visa re-done. The night before we left we went for a wander down the river and there was some sort of festival going on, in which alot of stalls had been set up selling balloons, candy floss, popcorn and the Cambodians personal favourite... bugs! We spent a while wandering amongst the fried cockroaches, spiders, millipedes, locusts and unhatched birds - even though they are not bugs! We stepped up to this one particular stall and began inspecting the mans produce. Unfortunately for a reason we cannot possibly decipher,?he took an instant disliking to Laura and shouted at her in Cambodian. Us obviously not understanding the language thought he was just being rather jolly. This in fact was not the case and after a bit more shouting and waving his arms, he picked up a handful of his lovely bugs and threw them at Laura. Right in her face. Scared for our lives, we ran. Before this tragic event we were actually thinking about purchasing a three inch battered tarantula, but then we decided against it. We settled for pasta instead and then went home for our final sleep in Cambodia.
We set off once again the next day at the ungodly hour of 6am?and the journey went without a hitch. We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City at about 1 o'clock and set about finding a flight straight up to Nha Trang. Fantastically we actually managed to find one for 3pm so we raced to the airport and set off for our destination. It was only 20 pounds and cut a 13 hour bus journey down to 45 minutes! Arriving in Nha Trang in the evening we found the most perfect hotel. For 20$ a night we got: 3 beds, 2 bathrooms, 2 air con units, a seperate TV area, a HUGE balcony, 2 full length mirrors, free internet, a swimming pool and a maid every single day! We planned on going out to experience Nha Trang nightlife as we had heard it was amazing, but after our 9pm meal our 6am rising caught up with us and our heads were practically dangling in our leftovers! So we headed to bed for an early one.
We are not really gonna be able to explain much more day by day as we ended up spending 12 days in Nha Trang. We will simply explain to you the highlights of the trip, as week 1 and week 2 sections.
Week 1
We wiled away the hours of our days lazing on the near perfect beach. We hired sunbeds, splashed around in the sea and topped up our tans. Also, there are about 25 ladies who walk around the beach trying to sell you all sorts of things from sunglasses to chewing gum, massages to manicures. On the first day we splashed out on a good old massage, a few bracelets, a manicure and pedicure, a silk painting (much to Lauras regret a few minutes later when she realised she didn't actually need a silk painting) and some mentos. Over the next few days we managed to limit ourselves and only went for the freshly caught lobster, crab and shrimp - which they cooked right in front of you. On one particular day we had a lobster, three crabs and six prawns for the grand total price of 9 pounds - or just 3 pounds each! Amazing! We made especially good friends with one of the ladies who was 7 months pregnant. She eventually gave up trying to sell us her stuff and would usually just come over and sit with us for a few hours - feasting on our leftover prawn heads (yum). After she realised she couldn't make any money from selling her bits and bobs she took to retrieving bottles of water for Laura who let her keep the spare change. She even bought us each a creme brulee to say thank you for our good company... and the prawn brains.
On one of our strolls to the beach we came across a hairdressers, and as all of our hair is in desperate need of some loving care and attention we decided to each get a trim. And seeing as the price was 200,000 dong which is about 6 pounds 50, it was pretty hard to resist. The Australian lady in charge happened to glance at Martha's roots and nearly passed out in shock. As the young Vietnamese hairdressers needed to be trained to dye blonde hair, she asked if Martha would like to be a guinea pig and have her roots touched up for the grand total price of FREE. Martha happily agreed as the sight of her roots in the mirror each day nearly brought her to tears. She didn't realise that 4 women who have never in their life attempted highlighting hair before would all crowd round her at once and fight over which bit of hair to highlight. But luckily it turned out okay and all of us got our hair straightened for the first time in 3 and a half months! Needless to say, as soon as we stepped out into the Vietnamese sunlight our hair frizzed up and resumed its normal texture.
The girl from the hairdressers recommended we start of our nights in the Red Apple Club and this is where our love for this wonderful place began... we shall explain.
The Red Apple club is a small bar with the usual barmen, pool table and outside seating but what makes it different is the simply amazing people who work and go there. We walked stright in a took up some seats right at the bar. These seats becames OUR seats. One night when we walked in there were three girls sitting in OUR seats, and so the barman and a bouncer ushered them out of the seats so that we could sit down! It was even put into consideration that reserved tickets be made for us so that we were always guarenteed our seat! The staff are simply the best. The owner of the bar is called Phil and he is actually the nicest person anyone could ever hope to meet. We will explain why shortly. There are also 2 English guys working there doing promotions etc., called Andy and Tom who are hot to trot and certainly make our evenings much more enjoyable! There is the regualr ladies man, Win, who will always be seen to be flirting with any lady within a 20 metre radius of the bar. He taught us some very exciting tricks with cocktail sticks which we shall be putting into practice when we return home! Then we have Bin who is Phils sidekick. He is a rather loveable character. There is Sonny the DJ who has amazing taste in music and we are actually managing to keep up with English hits because he is always on the ball! He never fails to get us busting some moves on the dance floor! There are the two barmen who always allow us Happy Hour any time we want, even though it finishes at 10pm and we normally got there a approximately 9.58pm! We also met sooo many cool people but there are too many to remember all their names so we have given them nicknames. Our personal favourites are 'Max and Paddy' who has the face of an angel but whose voice directly resembles Peter Kays! There is 'Irish', who is shockingly from Ireland! 'Converse' who has tattoos of Converse trainers on his feet! Wierd! 'Crimewatch' who used the great chat-up line 'You may have seen me on such programmes as Crimewatch and Police, Camera, Action'. '12 Year Old' whom we met in Koh Tao and who is 20 but officially looks 12! 'Mr. Coombes' who is the spitting image of our ex-maths teacher Mr. Coombes... and his sidekick 'Ginger' who is ginger! 'Cheltenham' who we excitedly found out is from our hometown of Cheltenham! And others include 'Sex Tourist', 'Starey Eyed Joe' and 'Dumb and Dumber' who hooked up with 'Fat and Fatter'. We also bumped into Fergus and Alex from Sea Gypsy which was very strange!
After Red Apple everyone goes on to a place called 'Why Not?' where you can dance the night away until 4am! We got sooooo excited as it is the first place we have been able to dance on an actual real life dancefloor in ages! Wahey! We sure showed everyone how well we dance! The bar manager of Why Not? is called Simon and he is a very funny character! He is officially a crazy, loony alcoholic with a body no bigger than a twig... roughly resembling that of a 6 year old! He is never seen without a can of beer in his hands whether it be 10am or 10pm. But he is hilariously funny and enjoys entertaining us with his impressions of a meerkat and a Duracell bunny. A lovely young chhappie called Chris also works at Why Not? and he bought us and himself Tequila shots in order to commiserate after Man U's unfortunate loss to Chelsea. We actually thought he was going to break down and weep after the final whistle blew crowning Chelsea the winners!
On one night at the Red Apple, Phil and Win invited us to join a drinking game called Ring Of Fire. This involves each picking up a card and each card has a different rule. One rule stated that you had to run into the middle of the club and do something crazy like act like an animal, hug the solemn bouncer, shout 'I'm a d*** head', and Win's personal favourite... ask someone if the have ever 'shaggerd' a sheep. (Win's pronounciation...) hmmmm. The same night Phil invited us for a ride around the town in the most amazing vehicle you could imagine. It is an army Jeep with an open roof and the exhaust poking upwards! It can fit about 50,000 people on it and we drove around Nha Trang waving at passers by who returned our waves with looks of awe and wonderment!
Week 2
We continued to spend our evenings at Red Apple and one night Phil asked us if we would like to help with flyering the next day. This involves heading to the beach at about 2pm and handing out a few flyers to the sunbathers and then hopping into the Jeep to go to the harbour at about 4pm to hand out flyers to the drunk people returning from the day's booze cruise. We gladly accepted this offer and it became a kind of official job for the remaining days we were in Nha Trang. There is usually 6 of us flyering to about 15 people... which makes our job very enjoyable and easy! And we get 2 free drinks a night.. brilliant! Also on Fridays and Mondays, the staff all wear white shirts, black ties and bowler hats. So seeing as we were sort of staff members we asked if we could dress up to! Phil gave us the go ahead and so on Friday evening we all drove in the Jeep to the local market where we stocked up on white shirts, bow ties and a bowler hat each. We wore our outfits that night and as you will see by the pictures we are soon to put up... we looked very cool indeed!
Nha Trang is also one of the best places to go scuba diving in Vietnam with its crystal clear waters and extensive coral, so we thought we would take the opportunity to have another go. We had to get up at 6am to see the best fish (so we gave the night before a miss!). It was just as brilliant as before and we saw even more fish. We saw 'long slithery ones' that looked like eels, 'white, yellow and black ones with long bits coming out of their heads', 'star fish with metre long legs', 'fish that looked like rocks', 'rainbow fish', and coral that grabbed your finger when you touched it! All the names above are indeed their technical names. We were recommended to go with Rainbow Divers by two likeable characters 'Sporty Phil' and 'Jack Mabbot Paul'. So called because Paul looks like a boy called Jack Mabbot and Phil said 'spoke to Phil' and his accent made it sound like he said 'sporty Phil'. They were training to become professional scuba divers and they also worked at the company with whom we did the scuba diving. They made the boat journey to the diving sites much better with their entertainment as Nyima was suffering from a heavy bout of sea sickness due to the incredibly choppy waves!
Now on to Phil. We decided that we would leave Nha Trang round a bout the 24th and head up to Hoi And and then Hanoi. But Phil told us we had to stay as it was his birthday on June 2nd. So we agreed but we had to find some new outifts to wear as we ran out after over a week of solid partying! So we came to an agreement that we would fly up to Hoi An on Sunday 27th, get some clothes made at one of the hundreds of tailors there, and then fly back down on Thursday 31st, in time for the party. As well as owning Red Apple Club, Phil owns a tour company called Highland Tours where he can arrange flights, tours and visa extensions. And Phil being the nicest person in the entire world arranged all of our flights for us, sorted out a discounted visa extensions and offered us a place to stay for free when we returned to Nha Trang! He also got in contact with his friend in Hoi An who is a tailor who would meet us at the airport and provide us with everything we needed once we got to Hoi An. He also took us to the airport for free! And when our flight was delayed he took us to the local beach for lunch where we dined on fresh shrimp and crab! The crab was battered and you had to eat everything - brains and all! And he is going to pick us up from the airport when we get back! And our 2 free drinks have practically turned into a night of free drinks! He has made sure that we get in free to all the clubs and bars, he gives us lifts in his Jeep whenever we need one (when Nyima had to go to the doctors half an hour away), he has shown us all the nice places to eat for cheap on the streets and he gives us free internet in his office! We didn't need much persuading to stay for an extra 2 weeks and work when we return from Hoi An. So unfortunately, we will now not be returning home until early August! Sorry people!
We will write from Hoi An to tell you how much money we accidentally spent on clothes! Bye for now xxx
- comments