Vietnam Trip ~ Day 5
July 17, 2012
The day after our snorkeling trip we played tourist in Nha Trang. We spent the day walking around the town, looking at interesting buildings, popping into souvenir shops, and enjoying the long beach stretching around the Nha Trang bay. It was nice to have such a leisurely day to just look around and enjoy the city. We did splurge by stopping at an ice cream/frozen yogurt place and having supper at a Mexican restaurant. Yum!
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| Hat shop |
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| Loaded party motorcycle |
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| Snoozing while waiting for a job |
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| Some government-looking building |
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| Statues at the entrance of the building |
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| A lotus-shaped building. We tried to go in and look around, but it was closed. |
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| Vietnam flag in front of the Nha Trang bay |
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| Had to try on a hat that matched the shirt |
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| Almost like being in Tanzania again... :) |
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| An interesting flavour! |
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| Shop owners playing a game while waiting for customers |
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| Ice cutters |
We had made travel plans that morning and the hotel manager on duty had helped us book tickets on a train out of Nha Trang very early the next morning (or basically just really late that night). We returned to our hotel room in the evening to get some sleep before waking up around 11:30 p.m., taking showers, packing up our things, and heading to the lobby to retrieve our passports from the front desk (it's standard practice for hotel owners to ask for your passports when you check in and return them to you when you check out - we were never worried about this and our passports always came back to us safe and sound). Then we grabbed a taxi, which drove us to the train station. We waited in the crowded waiting room until our train was supposed to arrive at 12:30 -- and then quite awhile after that. The train finally did arrive about half an hour late. Just before it arrived the back doors of the station opened and we all traipsed out to the tracks behind the building. There were vague signs to show which area you should wait at to get on which train car. When the train finally slowly pulled in to the station, the crowds surged forward with such force that I was worried I would lose Jonathan. I hung on to his backpack as we made our way toward our car. Soon, though, we just decided to jump onto the closest car, fearing that we wouldn't be able to get onto the train before it pulled out of the station. Of course, our fears were in vain. We had ample time to hop up the stairs of the car and walk through a few until we found the one with our seats. We were a bit surprised to find several passengers had already staked a claim on the floor below our wooden benches and were lying there sleeping on thin mats. We managed to maneuver into our bench seat without stepping on the sleepers, though, and settled in for what would be a long, slow, uncomfortable trip up the coast to Danang.
