Day 233 - An uncomfortable arrival in Nha Trang

After an extremely restless night on our seats, we arrived in beautiful Nha Trang at 6.30am to the sun trying to break through the clouds. Nha Trang is a medium sized Vietnamese city on a pretty beach that arcs around the coastline that is dotted with tiny, rocky islands. One thing that is catching our attention is that Vietnam seems to be made up of many small towns, that could almost be classified as villages in China, and yet depsite the small population (by small we mean a town the size of Wellington) we seem to be constantly surrounded by the echoes of "hellos" and hunted by motorbikes at every step.

We spent our usual hour or so finding a room we were happy with at a price we were happy with, and while Adam rested Liv went out in search of pastries she had spotted on our walk around town! She returned only minutes later, after finding a delicious pastry shop next door with chocolate croissant and apple pie in hand! Adam's trying to pretend like our location is not a good thing, but really he's as chuffed about it as Liv is - well almost!

After a quick breakfast (the pastries were an entree), we headed by foot to Long Son Pagoda a couple of kilometres away. It was on this walk that the reality that we were actually still in Asia sunk in. Long gone were the nicely paved footpaths of Hoi An, today we were competing for room with the thousands of trucks, motorbikes and cyclists on the dirty, broken roads.

The Long Son Pagoda was nice enough, but it was the newly constructed White Stone Buddha perched at the top of the hill behind the pagoda that we found the most interesting. At the base of the Buddha are the bronze busts of Thich Quang Duc and 6 other monks who died of self immolations in protest of the politics of the South Vietnam leader that caught the attention of the world in 1963. This majestic looking Buddha looks out over the city, and we would later use it as a navigation tool to find our way home.

Our next stop was Po Nagar Cham Towers that were built between the 7th-12th centuries on the site that has been used for worship since the 2nd century. These towers have been semi-reconstructed, so although the temples were similar to those we saw at My Son, here we got some idea of what they looked like hundreds of years ago. These towers are the first of their kind, their predecessors were made of wood, but after being burnt down by Javanese invaders, were rebuilt in brick. There are only 4 of 8 of these towers still remaining, so it didn't take long to look around, and soon we were back on our feet walking along the beach to find lunch.

In the late afternoon we relaxed on the beach with our books and Adam booked his scuba-diving trip for tomorrow morning. Liv's still deciding if she'll go along and snorkel / sunbathe on the boat!

Adlibing a real Asian Nha Trang.