No reservations (Jan. 30/09 - Nha Trang, Vietnam)

Another day, another kamikaze bus driver. We thought that taking a regular full size bus this time would make for a safer ride since you can't really drive a huge bus like a madman, right? Wrong! Once we were out of the slow traffic around the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, he pretty much let loose and didn't take his foot off the gas for eleven hours. Why it is necessary to go 120 km/hr with a bus full of 50 people on a road with lots of corners is beyond me. It was a long drive, and the lack of air conditioning made it feel even longer. Rice fields and rocky hills extended from the city to the coast, where the beach town of Mui Ne was bustling with tourists and kite surfers. We made a short pit stop for lunch at a cafe that had a menu without any english on it. Try as we might, we weren't able to identify anything, so we randomly picked something. The waitress came back twice to tell us our picks weren't available, so we got her to just bring her whatever they did have since we were down to ten minutes before the bus was leaving. We ended up with sauteed squid and morning glory (a green veggie) that was thankfully really good! The highway followed the coast past a field of sand dunes where local kids were selling sheets of plastic for tourists to slide down on. We reached the beach town of Nha Trang just after dark and were dumped on the side of the street with a bunch of other backpackers, most of whom had no reservations for the night.


Knowing that the friggin' Lunar New Year was still in full swing, we had a feeling that it might be hard to find a room. We were right - every one of the first six or seven places we tried were full. Then we found one that offered to let us sleep in the lobby for free, but we did book a room for a couple more nights there since they had room tomorrow. They told us to wait and sent one of their staff out on his motorbike to see if any other hotels in town had room. I was skeptical of course, as there was nothing in it for them, and when the guy came bak 15 minutes later saying every hotel in town was full, we opted to head out and look for ourselves. Sure enough, the very first place we checked (right next door even!) had rooms - several of them. Add that to the tally of lies we've been told in this country. Happy to have a place to crash for the night, we found some dinner and booked some overnight bus tickets onwards to Hoi An in a few days so we don't get stuck yet again!