Nha Trang, Vietnam

Hellooo everyone!

Hope all is good at home :) so we are in a city called Nha Trang at the moment. It is south ish Vietnam on the coast. We arrived here Sunday morning after a nice smooth non breaking down bus journey! Our first impressions were a bit odd. We had been told that it was one of the most beautiful bays in the world. Lies! The beach is nice but average at best and I'm convinced its an artificial beach. The sea was warm but not as clean at Hoi An. As we arrived so early we couldnt check in so we left our bags and had breakfast then went to the beach to relax. As it was Sunday there were a lot of families around. I mean there's not much wrong with the beach but its not the way the books describe! There's a lot of high rise buildings on the beach front too. But all the same its an OK place to stop a few days along our route and relax. We also notied tons of signs in russian and lots ofrussian people so must be a popular russian holiday spot. Monday we headed up town to some towers we had read about. They're called ponagar cham towers if you fancy a google! They were interesting architecture and not like anything we've seen so far in Vietnam. It is strange here though because at the holy places they want you to be covered up and take shoes off etc etc but then they allow children to run riot around which I just think is slightly disrespectful. We have learnt to try not to understand the Vietnamese now as they are some tricky people! After seeing the towers we headed for lunch in a dive shop we had found which had a great cafe. We've been missing English foods and they had real Heinz beans and proper hp sauce! It was great. There seems to be lots of dive shops here so that made me smile and think of mum.

We then headed back to the beach for a couple of hours. There was a young boy selling foods on the beach and came to ask if we wanted to buy ' cheap cheap lady yum yum' when we said no thank you he sat on the bed next to us and look so fed up. I gradually started chatting to him and found out he was 13( looked around 6/7) and called 'kang'. He was such a sweet little kid! His English wasn't great but we played with him for about 3 hours just playing football with a can and making sand castles and just joking around. Despite the language barrier we had so much fun, emotion seems universal and he is a cool guy i wont forget! It made me concerned why he wasn't at school and then got me thinking he probably doesn't go. A bit of a tug at the heart strings and a reminder that although we have seen minimal poverty in Vietnam and its a fast developing nation there are still some very sad and needy cases here. I feel Cambodia will be tough for me.

Today we headed off early on a snorkelling trip. Despite mum being a scuba instructor (and a good one at that) water is not my forte! As a lot of you also know I am very terrified of vomit too! I'd made sure I had a travel sickness tablet but a short while into a rather choppy boat ride there were some very green looking Asians! I was tempted to hand my pills around but thought I might look a bit odd trying to force people to take odd tablets! Although I was very anxious the whole way we made it the 45 min trip to the island. I managed to snorkel with no squealing and winging for an hour and half! Even despite flooding snorkel mask. So I'm proud of myself being brave. As I said I'm not good with water! We then stopped by another beach on the way home and managed to make it back to the harbour with no vomiting which pleased me greatly. One of the things I've decided about this trip is to try and do things outside my comfort zone so now that's kayaking snorkelling and going on a scooter! Get me!

Our hostel is at the back of an air force school and this morning at 630am they started their graduation. A bit early but interesting to watch all the same! We have come to the conclusion that there are hugeee culture differences here to the UK. They don't mind walking into you, today I found out that they don't mind stabbing you with broken glass (woman walks past and stabs me by accident and cuts my leg no apology) they don't mind squashing you on pavements , they don't mind staring pointing and laughing, they don't have customer service at all! Despite it sounding like I'm moaning we have had an incredible journey through Vietnam so far and met some also very nice people. I read up last night about the Vietnam wars and their history and seems they have had years of unrest in this country so that may explain some things. But its all a learning curve and good to understand not all cultures are like ours! Tomorrow night we get a night bus to Saigon (ho chi Minh city) before heading to Cambodia on Sunday. We've heard Cambodia is hotter, more poverty, and deep fried tarantulas so we are preparing ourselves!

Hope everyone at home is all doing well. Missing you all lots and lots of love xxx