After such a crazy day of cycling through the city and running from one fitting to another, it was nice to have a sleeper bus to lie down on, and relax. It was my first time on a sleeper bus and I’d say these seats are a mix between a normal reclining bus seat and a sleeper train bed. These sleeper beds are bunk-beds in the bus in three rows and each bed has a decent amount of leg room. It’s like lying in a cubby you have to climb into and the back of the chair reclines to almost all the way down (but just uncomfortable enough that you never really get a great sleep).
Our ride left at 6:00pm and we arrived to Nha Trang at 5:30am. We only stopped a couple times, once for food and twice for the bathroom. The second bathroom stop was at 3:00am and we pulled off on the side of the road in front of someone’s house. Whoever needed to go to toilet, walked through the tall grasses on the side of this person’s house to find a good spot. Bugs, tall grasses, pitch black night, probably spiders, snakes, and who knows what else awaited us! Well, I had to go so I braved the mini jungle and ran back to the bus, unharmed.
When Lusa, Gareth, and I got to Nha Trang we were happy to discover the hotel we had booked was only a few blocks away from the bus station. We started walking south and noticed the beach and sunrise to our left. A no-brainer, we changed directions and watched a gorgeous sunrise up over this vast ocean, while beautiful mountains stood in the background. The ocean breeze made me feel so refreshed and alive after such a long night. Older Vietnamese men and women all around us were stretching and swinging their arms and legs around. It was really cute to see them all attempting to exercise.
After feeling half-rejuvenated, we turned back around and walked a few streets west to our place, Ruby Guesthouse. The place was nice, 5 stories and decorated to feel like ‘home’. The three of us were sharing a room and we put down our bags and headed out for breakfast. Noodle soup and sandwitches later, we were each a dollar poorer and very satisfied.
We spent the day on the beach, had massages, and were constantly approached by Vietnamese sellers. Everyone wanted to sell us cigarettes, books (color copies of the most popular backpacker books), candy, gum, water, soft drinks, jewelry, sunglasses, artwork, you name it! The sellers are pretty relentless and never go away. They always start their price at about triple what it should be, and the more you say no, the lower the price gets of course. I found myself wanting to buy things just because they were so cheap.
Lusa and I had lunch at a restaurant near the beach and I was craving western food. All I’ve eaten in the past three months is noodles, rice, noodle soup, egg rolls, spring rolls, and stir-fried vegetables… I was ready some western food! We both ordered burgers with all the toppings and French fries. As I ate I thought it was the best meal I’d ever had!
Finding a scuba shop was next on our list and we signed up with a shop called Octopus Divers, owned by The Sailing Club, a nice restaurant/lounge/bar on the beach.
When we got back to the beach a backpacker named Rich was lying near us. He’s a Kiwi (New Zealander) who now lives in Sydney
Lusa and I were craving pad-thai and hadn’t been able to find it at all in Vietnam SE Asia . It just seems standard.
We had to wake up early in the morning, for our diving trip. We were diving Octopus Rock to check out some swim-throughs and another reef that had more to see. The views on the boat ride out were great, green mountains, thick brown cracked rock boulders, and endless deep blue water.
The visibility was decent, about 15-20 feet, but the swim-throughs were great! We would circle around a coral and our guide would point out a tiny hole to us. Buoyancy is really important because of how narrow of a hole we were swimming through, so we had to be very carefully how deeply we inhaled and exhaled. As I swam though this little tunnel I had to squeeze and contort my body in unnatural ways to curve around the coral, clusters of fish parted ways for me and sunlight shined in through the other side of the tunnel. It was gorgeous. We swam through a couple other swim-throughs and I decided then that I’m going to have to dive far more often!
Besides the great tunnels, we also saw heaps of lion fish, a couple turtles, a beautiful cuttle fish that was showing off his camouflage skills by changing a myriad of colors. Around the polychromatic coral we also saw clown fish, a five foot grouper, black and white snapper, trumpet fish, barracuda, and a lot of reef fish. On our second dive we spotted a sea horse, lots of lion fish, flounder fish, damsel fish, ghost fish, angel fish, and more reef fish of course. It was a perfect morning.
As I had promised to the little Vietnamese lady, I headed to the beach to have a massage by her. She found me on the beach as I was reading my book and for the next hour I had an oil-massage with real waves crashing in the background. $5… I’m ready to move to Asia .
Lusa went out at night and met up with Sam who just got in from Hoi An. Sam was settled into a hostel and had met a group of people. They all planned to motorbike to waterfalls in the morning and since our group of four planned to go too, we all made plans to meet up in the morning. Eleven of us fueled up and soon were riding North in search for Ba Ho, which means “three waterfalls” in Vietnamese.
We stopped to re-group and noticed that Rich wasn’t with us. We hadn’t even reached the highway yet and were worried that he would never make it since he didn’t have the directions. Lusa and I split off in separate directions and rode around town to look for him, nothing. We waited about 20 minutes for him, but our group was getting antsy and we had to head out. As we reached the entrance to the highway, there was Rich, standing next to his bike and staring at the incoming traffic. He looked like a little lost puppy dog and we picked him up to find out what happened. “Okay, everybody ready now?.. Let’s go!”
Fifteen minutes later we were at a fork in the road and all stopped to figure out which direction to go. “Where’s Rich?” I asked. No one knew. “Okay… I’ll go back for him” and off I sped to find out what had happened to him (again). This time I was a bit worried though. When we first got on our bikes Rich told me he had only been on a bike one time before and crashed it. When we first picked up our bikes I refreshed him on how to switch gears and he seemed to be alright. But now, speeding back on this beachside road, all I could think was, “I hope he’s alright.. maybe he just ran out of gas?” and he did. Poor Rich, again on the side of the road pushing his bike. I laughed with him about his luck this morning and told him to hang on while I got some fuel.
In all of these SE Asian countries, most food stands on the side of the road also sell petrol, so it wasn’t difficult to find Rich some fuel. The lady gave me a litter and a funnel; I drove off to feed Rich’s bike. Fifteen minutes later we met back up with the group and rode off towards the falls.
We passed fishing villages and small towns and stopped once to have some drinks while others ate fresh clams and oysters that were sitting in bowls of water on the side of the road. When we left the road-side stop our group did a buddy system so we could keep an eye on each other.
We had to ask around a few different road-side stands to figure out exactly where this road was that would lead us to the waterfalls. I think we backtracked on the same road a few times before we figured out that the little dirt road in the middle of a rice field, was the right road to take us to this large attraction.
I was riding in the front of our motorbike group with Gareth and as we rode along the rocks and bumps, I would ask every Vietnamese person we passed, “Ba Ho?”. Each local kept pointing me in the same direction and I felt comfortable that this road was the right one. After 15 minutes of bumps, dirt, mud, and rough terrain, a couple guys in our group in the back thought we were never going to make it and wanted to turn around. Gareth and I knew we were going in the right direction and continued on. Luckily the guys did too, because less than two minutes later we saw the big sign- “BA HA TOURISM AREA”. We made it.
We hiked on massive rocks using our arms and legs to climb over boulders. Flip-flops were probably not the best decision, but I had to make do. Some parts of the climb were so difficult that metal footholds were nailed into the stone to assist with climbing. It was a nice hike and the whole time, Gareth, Rich, and I played the ‘name game’. One person starts with a famous person’s name- George Clooney, the next person has to think of a famous person’s first name that starts with a C, Carrie Bradshaw, and so on. If someone says a double lettered name like Matthew Mcconaughey, it reverses back. Good game to play while hiking because usually your mind is focused on the next foothold or place to step and this game is a way to keep conversation going while semi-paying attention.
We got to the first waterfall and jumped in to swim in the pool at the bottom. I bought an underwater camera online a couple weeks ago and had my dad ship it to my hotel in Nha Trang, so I had a new camera to play with. A few of us climbed up the waterfall and into a small cave behind the rushing water. It was one of those moments I’ll remember for a while.
The next two waterfalls were nice to climb to and check out. But soon we were back on the road heading home. We stopped once to take pictures of the sun setting behind mountain peaks and before we knew it, we were back.
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