Day 65 - Nha Trang

The bus arrived on time today at 6 am. I felt so incrediby rough getting up. As soon as I got off the bus it poured. More rain again today. I spent the next couple of hours on the verge of passing out. I needed to find a place to sleep badly. I hadn't felt this sleep deprived since University and I used to pull all nighters. I found a hotel called ABC in town for $7.50 that was probably the nicest hotel I've stayed in so far it even has a bathtub! Now that lets you know what kind of places I've been staying in! It was great! I got to take a nap, shower and acquired a new hair comb.

After a lunch of pho, I walked down to the beach. SInce it had been raining the last week or so, the water was very brown and muddy, conducive of the wet season. Of course it started to rain again. I guess on time on the beach today. Instead made it over to a photo gallery called Long Thanh Gallery. The photographs taken by this man are absolutely stunning and all in black and white. He takes photos of vietnamese daily life but were all taken quite a long time ago though. He said that it's quite hard to get good shots these days and his favourite places to photograph now are up north in places like Sapa and the hilltribe people.

Despite the rain, the bakery items here made up for it. There are bakerys all over the place. The pasteries are very affordable and delicious. I spent 10D (under $0.50) and got a carrot cake loaf, coconut tart and slice of a vanilla cake roll. Unfortunately my week long craving for chocolate cake had not been satisfied.

Next stop was the Long Son Pagoda to see the giant seated Buddha. This Buddha looks quite a lot like the Buddha on Lantau Island in HK. It started to get really dark really quickly and opted to take a motorbike back to the hotel. Unfortunately they went in the wrong direction for about 2 min towards another ABC hotel. This is what happens when there are no copywrites in Vietnam. Finally, stopped, asked for directions and made it back to the hotel about 1 hour we go on the bikes.

Dinner was fantastic. Went to a placed called Le Petit Bistro for some French cuisine. It was expensive but worth every dong! My meal was 190000D and I had stewed veal in a red wine sauce with mashed potatoes. I'm so glad this place is here. It was really nice to eat something with substantial amount of meat in it. It feels like i'm never full lately because there is not much meat available so it is usually incredibly expensive. Now that I'm full and happy, it's time to take a sleeper bus to Ho Chi Minh city, AKA Saigon or HCMC. I'm not looking forward to riding a Camel Travel bus after the Sinh Cafe bus.