For our final day in Nha trang, we decided to take shelter from the sun, avoid the beach and be cultural instead. We visited some pagoda or other, a very, very large buddha statue and a gallery for a local photographer whose work was more than impressive. This took until early afternoon and after that we headed for a spa for a mud bath. We figured it might be medicinal for our sunburn. We had to start off with a mineral shower which added a pang of pain. The actually mud bath was great, lovely mud. We poured it everywhere. We were told to get out eventually and get another mineral shower. This wouldn't have been so bad really except for one thing. izzie and I were the only ones using the women's shower and there was a tub full of men leering in our direction and going to lengths to do so. Needless to say we moved on pretty quickly.
We were directed towards a high pressure spray thing. High pressure water isn't the most comfortable experience but put it on sunburtn skin and you have some serious pain! However this wasn't the worst - we still had a hot spa bath to go and at 40 degrees C convincing us to get in took a while. I was first to edge myself in being the least sunburnt it was probably less painful for me. It was ok once in the water but it took some adjusting! Ah it was all in the name of fun!
We headed back to our hotel to pick up some photos, Craig's laundry, and then went for dinner before waiting for our bus. This time it was an actual sleeper bus. We were on the back row on the top with 2 other guys . I made sure I had a bed where I could stick my feet into the aisle instead of having a bed in front of me too. We arrived in Ho Chi Minh city (aka Saigon) the next morning. We hopped in a taxi and pointed to a hostel to be driven round the corner. And he made us pay. Phht. There wasn't a triple room ready when we got there so they let us use a different one to shower etc and said they would take our bags up when the room was ready and we went out to explore. We started with the Notre Dame cathedrale (not the famous one form France but yes there is a notre dame.) We had a look around and got away with sitting through a mass of sorts. There was no priest so I suppose it wasn't official. We moved on from there to the war remnants museum. It was really interesting and really explained the war. It had lots of photographs so a little haunting but I'm still not over the real bones at the massacre memorial in Nanjing. Everything closes for lunch so we went and fed ourselves. I say fed ourselves, Craig just about ate a snack - I repeat -he's such a picky eater!
After lunch we went to the reunification palace, which for a palace looked very much as thought it had stepped out of the late 70's, early 80's. We amused each other by guessing the nationalities of fellow tourists.
After we left we headed for a hindu temple but passed a music store on the way and I was distracted by a 19k grand piano. If anybody would like to buy me one I wouldnt turn it down! We did make it to the temple which was extremely small but overtly colourful. Some stalls tried ripping us off with incense but charging 200,000 dong for it. we gave them 30,000 and still felt it was too much.The plagues of being a tourist.
We got caught in some torrential rain walking back to our hotel so we danced and sang and made fools of ourselves and returned dripping wet. We hid out in our room until the road which had become flooded, drained a little. I used the time to update my travel journal which had been abandoned since China. We had a lovely meal before hitting the shops. Our intention was to buy food for our day on the coach yesterday but only bought bread as it was the only thing reasonably priced. We looked round the souvenir shops as Izzie and I both want what we have nicknamed 'backpacker trousers'. That and Izzie wanted to waste her dong. We spent forever in a music shop; they would upload music to your mp3 for a small fee and Izzie is very bored of her limited selection of music so spent a while browsing the selection and picking a number. I also perused the CD's giving into kate nash, casting crown and dj tiesto. As craig was buying 2 as well they said we got one free which I claimed and opted for ella fitzgerald after a lengthy elimination process. It was about 10.30 by the time we left and we still weren't done with the shopping. We eventually went to bed as we were getting a bus at 6.35am so some sleep would be nice.
The bus was uneventful. There was a french school group on board which amused me greatly because they looked so French (it's the nose and the hair).
We arrived in Sihanoukville and had to fight off the tuk-tuks and taxis choosing to walk to a hotel. We underestimated the distance but it didn't take too long, it was just mostly in the dark.
We checked in and sat down for dinner with the full intention of hitting a bar afterwards, something we haven't done since Shanghai. Our plans were foiled. Our dinner took 3 hours from ordering to finishing. Not only that but Craig found glass in his food. I immediately took the plate and marched over to the nearest member of staff. They came over and offered him a free beer. He was going to accept (silly boy) but I jumped in explaining that we had waited for far too long and then to find glass in the food was unacceptable and at the very least he was getting his meal for free with an extra beer. I'm quite good at making complaints, I was calm but firm so he agreed and gave us all a free beer. I would have preferred not to pay for any of the meal as mine was over done and the pasta was stuck to the dish from being sat on a hot plate =( and Izzie's vegetables didn't arrive. We had to ask for them after she had eaten her cordon bleu but I wasn't in the mood to push it. We won't be eating there again. All this took away the desire to do anything but sleep. Izzie and I had a girly chat and then dropped off.
It's a bit wet today as it rained quite heavily during the night but it won't stop us going to the beach! The sea is still the sea ^-^
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