Nha Trang, Vietnam (30th October - 2nd November)

As we'd arrived with a different bus company to the one we booked, we were dropped off in a different place to where we'd been expecting. We'd thought we'd be dropped off at the Sinh Tourist office, which was a handy 5 minute walk from our hotel. But instead we found ourselves at a bus station. Most annoying was that the maps app on Jamie's phone was playing up, so we couldn't even find our location on GPS and work from that. Jamie had read that the hotel wasn't far from the bus station though, so we set off walking anyway. Initially it was slightly aimless, just hoping to pick up Wi-Fi, but we then used the sun to at least check we were walking in the right general direction. It took quite a while before we were able to pick up some unsecured and functioning Wi-Fi, but that finally allowed Jamie to get the map loaded back up and find our location on it. We were going the right way, thankfully, but we were still quite a way from our hotel. Turns out there are two bus stations! But hey, we kept on walking and arrived about an hour after our bus had gotten in.

We stayed at Mojzo Inn. We arrived pretty exhausted, partly from a night on a bus and partly from the hour's walk. It was far too early to check in though, unfortunately. We paid to get an extra day's breakfast and then napped in the lounge area until our room was ready. It was a decent hotel - the staff were really nice, even though one of them misread my passport and called me Marie (my middle name) for the duration of our stay.

The important thing though - breakfast! That was really good actually, so long as you skipped the coffee and went for passion fruit juice instead. The menu initially seemed a bit stingy as you could only select one item, unless you paid extra. So there was no having eggs and pancakes, like we'd had in our previous couple of places. But the dishes were a decent size and filling on their own, so that was fair enough. On the first couple of days I had poached eggs and bread. You got 3 eggs and 3 slices of baguette, so pretty filling. Then on the last full day I went for a banana pancake, which was also pretty filling, even though it didn't look like it should be. It was technically a pancake with some banana slices around it, rather than a banana pancake, but still, it was really nice.

Nha Trang's a beach resort kind of place, though there are a few historical sites in the area too. We didn't do a huge amount there - mostly chilled out. It was cool to sit on the beach and watch the waves - they were pretty big. Although the beach itself wasn't that nice really - it needed some cleaning. Especially as we found a used needle on it - ew!

On our last day we checked out quite early to get the bus. It was about a 5 hour journey to Mui Ne. This time we were actually on a Sinh Tourist bus, which was progress, except it was a minibus with no leg room at all. For 5 hours. I'm not even very tall and my knees were pressed against the seat in front. One poor guy was taking the bus all the way to Saigon - a 10 hour journey.