There are many wondrous sites that nik and I have seen and will see over the next few months. Nha Trang will be up there but for all the wrong reasons. The decision to leave Dalat was made easier by the inclement weather, the need for warmth demonstrating one of the basic principles of Mazlows Hierarchy of needs. As is often the case buying a bus ticket is never easy we enquired at numerous travel cafes all providing conflicting info and much confusion. My Vietnamese isnt much cop I think this might have something to do with it (Chuc Mung Nam Moi by the way - Happy New Year).

 

The bus journey from Dalat to Nha Trang was perhaps one of the oddest (andslowest!) we have experienced, our driver didnt use the gears to slow down but a constant tapping of the brake pedal, seeing as most of this journey was downhill the accompanying smoke and burning smell from the brakepads soon caused us to take a pit stop on the side of a mountain - To everyone's amusement at first this seemed a bizarre place to stop for refreshments - no cafe or toilet, but once everyone had got off and seen the smoke pouring out of the tyres we knew why this was our refreshment stop!











Absolutely stunning scenery all along this journey passing through national parks, minority villages and beautiful mountains stretching into the distance. The official journey time is 4 and half hours but this is Vietnam time after nearly 6 hours of travel time (he basically went about 20mph all journey!) we were near the coast and heading for the beach town of Nha Trang. First impressions - a lively westernised bach resort with many bars and tourists. Due to the approaching New year festivities beds were becoming harder to find this resulted in all 3 of us Nik and I plus Zach the aussie sharing a room. 



The immediate plans involved ATM, food and beer not in that order. Whilst getting our bearings and following the postage stamp map we started drinking from these cool little stalls on the street ending up in a bar for food and more beer. This is where it all started going downhill the mite progressed as normal by trwaling from one bar to the next and then onto a couple of niteclubs. By now all 3 of us were drinking "JamJars" various highly alcoholic cocktails ontop of many lagers. Fortunately Nikki was more compus mentus than Zach and I, she managed to get us both in a taxi and back to the hotel. Arriving at the hotel we were all escorted / helped / shoved / coerced to our room, in a later flashback Zach remembered falling up the stairs flat on his face. (See Hoi An entry for update on this) 



Needless to say the next day was a washout and we didnt all surface until gone 4pm, feeling very ill and sorry for ourselves - the looks from the securtity guard as we left for food that evening pretty much said it all. Not that we could remember it with total clarity. As we have found many of the best things that have happened to us both tend to be very random and out of the blue! After eating then buying our overnite sleeper 12 hour bus ticket to move up the coast, we met two motorcycle guides from a group called "Easy Riders" - they continued to show us pictures and describe the experience of seeing the 'real Vietnam and minority villages' within the remote Highlands, which also included 1000km on the back of a 100cc Honda over 4 days(!!!) but on hearing the stories Nik and I were definately hooked and after much deliberating and calculations we agreed to join them in a four day trip into the Central Highlands seeing the real Vietnam....



 The next morning feeling fully refreshed (ish) we checked out leaving Zach arranging to meet him up the coast in 4/5 days time. Our guides Mr Phouc and Mr Tien were barking mad but made us feel very safe. It was the best decision we made and without doubt the BEST thing we have done in Vietnam to date, as will be seen from the next update we had a wicked time...and survived!!!