Dodging a Typoon – Nha Trang

The train trip south to Nha Trang was another overnight sleeper trip. This time it was our first encounter with Vietnam Rail First Class Sleeper Air-Con. It was pretty bad. Despite labor being so cheap in Vietnam they appear to not want to worry about leaving dirty sheets on beds and as one person leaves another arrives in the compartment to use the same facilities.We had 2 middle-aged women who were stowaways in the compartment – 2 of them sleeping in one bed. At first I thought she was the conductor because she wanted to see our tickets. See, steal who knows. After a little while one of the conductors worked out what was going on and once she had paid her bribe everything was OK for her trip down south.

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Arriving in a wet Nha Trang in the morning after it rained all night we made our way to our hotel where the sky decided to fall in on us again with a massive tropical storm. We didn’t know at this stage but we were getting rain from the first tropical storm of the season Tropical Storm Pakhar.

So what can be said of Nha Trang, this was supposed to be the couple days of our trip where we could go down the beach, I could eat seafood as I’d seen so many great things written online about Nha Trang seafood. Because of the typhoon we lazed around ate breakfast until about 11 at the sailing club, then relax some more, looking out on the grey sky and brown ocean and wonder – only if it would stop raining.

One thing I can say about Nha Trang – plenty of Russians. Apparently there is a charter airline flying in from Siberia direct to Nha Trang in Boeing 737’s – can’t say I really want to do that trip! The beaches looked OK considering there was so much brown water and floating debris being washed up on the shore.

One day we went across to the VinPearl resort on the island and spent the day playing arcade games. This was my last day in Nha Trang and the weather had just started to clear – it didn’t rain much but the water was still brown.

The food was a bit mixed, it was more expensive than anywhere in the north and I didn’t think it was really better. The Sailing Club on the foreshore was an exception though while their breakfasts were excellent, still more expensive than most, I was still paying a lot less than home.