Ding Dang, Nha Trang

August 12th - 14th

Some people love it. Some hate it. Perhaps it is a divisive destination for some travellers, but we both really enjoyed our time in Nha Trang, known to be the beach capital of Vietnam. This honor used to be for the famous China Beach for which the television show was named, but that area has long since ceded the title to Nha Trang.  The actual city was very similar to the strip in Fort Lauderdale, with a promenade with occasional parks running the length of a long white beach. Directly across a small four lane beach road were a ton of hotels and restaurants. On a calm day the water is a deep blue and across the way there is a large green island connected in the distance by a long overseas gondola.

We arrived in the early morning by the sleeper bus and headed to our hotel/hostel, La Suisse.  We had a while until check in, but they provided us free breakfast on their rooftop restaurant.  Common breakfasts in Vietnam have French twists and usually involve any breakfast item and a baguette (i.e. jam or omelets).  Exhausted from the sleeper bus we took naps for a few hours and then headed to the beach.  The main areas of beach for tourists like us are concentrated around the two major restaurants and bars. (That is unless you stay in one of the many ritzy hotels in the area that have their own sectioned off areas).  There are certainly more isolated areas of beach probably only minutes walk away, but we were interested in taking it easy.  And that is what these enterprises offer.

We walked up to the Louisiana Brewery and Restaurant, one of the two major places (the other is called the Sailing Club).  The beachfront has nice quality cushioned wooden lounge chairs in pairs or groups each with a large umbrella usually made of thatched fronds and a small table.  One pays about $3 each for a days usage. The area is a little crowded but we did not mind.  A server comes by your chair and asks if you need anything from the adjacent restaurant and as it happens microbrewery – this fresh craft beer is one of the advantages of the Louisiana over the Sailing Club.  Standard Western beach fare including hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken fingers is available for delivery to your chair as well as cooked prawns, whole fish, oysters. Separate Vietnamese and Indian menus can also be requested.  Next to this area are the water sports which were significant and active.  People were wind and kite surfing, jet-skiing and kayaking, none of which we partook in as we had officially become beach bums, that and we have both seen videos of parasailing gone bad…ouch!

We had a couple of the ice cold draft beers, but we just relaxed, alternately napping in the shade, swimming in the clear water and reading our Kindles.  We also made use of our recently purchased Chinese speaker set and hooked it up to the iPOD, subjecting near-by beachgoers to our beach playlist of reggae and Caribbean music. For dinner we went searching through the back roads of the city, picture neon signs promoting massages, American food and beach stuff, looking for a sushi place that we heard was excellent. Unfortunately, upon arrival to said restaurant, there was only an Irish guy who owned a bar that now stood in its place. so much for getting a bootleg of the Lonely Planet…can’t trust those dates! He was in fact, very helpful and suggested a place that the locals went to in the night market. It indeed was solid sushi, and better yet, five maki rolls and two beers were only $12.

After a nice beach side stroll illuminated by the full moon we found ourselves again at the Louisiana but this time we went to the bar area instead of the beach.  We had several of their local microbrews that were blissfully ice cold and in frosty mugs (a premium in Asia).

The next morning we headed to Vinpearl Land, aka a Vietnamese magical wonderland, across the channel. We probably would have never attempted an amusement park on this trip, but several couples recommended making the trek over there specifically for the water park and since we both love water parks we decided to take the chance. We walked several miles from downtown to the entrance to the park (we wouldn’t recommend it). In order to get to the actual park you can either a ferry or board the world’s longest gondola ride over water. We chose the later. Our gondola ride went smoothly, except for the fact that we were with two kiwis (New Zealanders) who both happened to be afraid of heights. Every time we would cross over a tower the woman would let out a squeal of fright that was unnerving to even me who has an under appreciation for vertigo.

We made it across safely and were ready to immediately start laughing at the cheesiness of our surroundings. We were pleasantly surprised that park was tastefully done, with professional landscaping, safe looking rides and a variety of activities to explore including outdoor rides, an indoor arcade, a water park and an indoor aquarium. We did have a little laugh, being we both grew up going to Disneyworld, on how many attractions and signage was Disney-looking or completely ripped off, ala the flying elephant ride. We headed straight to the water park, lathered on the sunscreen, locked up our belongings and headed for the rides. As we are both used to dealing long crowds, we were confused when there was no one around the water slides. It suddenly dawned on us that it was because the Vietnamese (and people from many other Asian cultures) do not like getting tanned.  This meant the waterpark rides were empty except for us and a handful of other foreign tourists. For our first ride we decided on a pretty tame looking ride called the Tsunami. It was a group ride with two or three people sitting in a double or triple tube. You were pushed into a half-pipe where your momentum would carry you up the other side and then you go back back down and up the other side, like snow boarders do.

We realized the difference between these slides and the ones we grew up with instantaneously.  We rocketed downwards, hit the uphill curve, got whiplash and then shot up the other half of the pipe hitting the opposite lip of the pipe.  Bouncing backwards we repeated this all way down the tube occasionally hitting the upper retaining wall and finally were dumped in a nice roll over into the pool.  We both came up laughing hysterically. And I mean it literally. We had so much adrenaline pumping through us afterwards that we couldn’t help but laugh uncontrollably at surviving it. Despite that experience, we thought it must have been a one time-fluke. Surely there can not be two crazy slides at this park? Testing fate, we headed to a more innocuous looking slide, called Black Hole (maybe the name should have given it away).  On appearance it was a covered tube slide that was all black inside and had several twists a turns and by rights looked like fun.  It began as expected with a brisk ride down the dark hole with some fun turns and bumps but near the end the tube turned downward into a fast decline.  It was so fast the water running down the tube that normally serves to facilitate sliding began to spray in our faces, blinding us like some of the straight down, kamikaze slides.  This was tolerable because right before the blinding spray we could make out daylight at the end of this stretch, giving what was false reassurance it would be over soon. Instead of the splash down we expected there was simply a sharp jolt, a feeling of falling and a slam into something below.  Upon opening our eyes, we found ourselves sliding around a giant funnel in which you spin around several times before swirling to the hole in the center. I can’t tell you how frightening it is to be moving towards a hole you have no idea where it goes to. Thankfully, this hole finally drops you several feet into a pool below.  Unfortunately we did not have easy access to our cameras, so none of this is otherwise documented and the description may not provide quite the sense of suspense we had.  We had to conclude that the “slide” engineers may have been better in Florida. 

We took a short break from all the heart pumping excitement in the lazy river.  This was a funny excursion because of the attempts to decorate portions of the river in thematic ways in an obvious and not entirely successful attempt to mimic Disney-like amusement parks.  A portion of the river was a haunted cave that the Vietnamese were reluctant to enter for unclear reasons and instead abandoned their rafts immediately before entering it causing a huge build up in tubes.  It was certainly dark in there and had fake giant spiders and tribal masks with a single working blacklight.  Later in the river the banks were adorned with mixed carvings including a depiction of the evolution of man and later dinosaurs.

We did some more slides that were thankfully fun but without the terror.  After doing the majority of the slides we headed to the Ocean World just outside the water park area.  This was also surprisingly well done even if the English version of the signs said a lot, but a little about the actual marine life adjacent.  Further down the corridor we heard intermittent group exclamations of delight.  We both wondered what attraction was causing all the commotion.  Maybe it was tank of dolphins, sharks or even penguins?  We got to this large tank and saw the group crowding together to see something obviously incredible.  It was a large viewing area of the main tank and after we saw this main event, we discovered it had some great giant rays, sizable white tip sharks, freely swimming eels and other impressive aquatic life on par with Atlanta’s aquarium.  So what was this awe inspiring display?  Feeding time for the sharks?  No.  A rare sighting of marine life?  No.  It was a woman dressed as a mermaid, complete with sequined fin costume, who was swimming in front of the viewing area on intervals and blowing kisses to the crowds.  Um, yeah.

After that educational experience we escaped the heat and headed to an area named “Indoor Attractions.”  We did not know what to expect but found a two-story complex decorated with some amateurish murals of middle school era fan boy art (Comic and movie characters with some Manga for good measure) and filled wall to wall with games including video arcade games, table games like air hockey, carnival games (the basketball, timer game) and a state-of-the-art modern theater that had a bonus dimension over puny 3D IMAX theaters: 4D!!!  We of course caught the matinée (there were four such theaters playing different sequences every 15 minutes or so).  We actually waited in line to enter a small room with seats in an slightly elevated platform and handed very old 3D/4D glasses.  They played a poorly rendered computer graphics car racing sequence to an ill-timed motion sequence of the platform.  Hilariously bad.  We played some carnival games, some rounds of air hockey, a Dance, Dance Revolution rip off game and I (Pearce) played a shooting game side-by-side with a very serious looking Vietnamese youth.  With no way to top that we decided to say goodbye to Vinpearl Land and hopped on the suped-up sky buckets back to the mainland.

On our first day at the beach we were approached by an Australian girl named Resha who was working as a promoter for the neighboring restaurant and bar called the Sailing Club.  She was there to talk about a party being held there on Saturday night (the night in question) and would have a fashion show, fire dancers and drink specials.  There was a cover but it could be avoided by going early for dinner.  So we got freshened up after a full day at the amusement park and headed to the “club.”  We were seated after a bit with a good view of the set up for the party.  They had brought out additional seats and tables below on the beach with a stage, DJ booth and giant blocks of ice that would later serve as an “ice bar.”  We both ate very well and had a nice chat with a couple from Australia.  One of the more memorable of our drinks so far was a local favorite mixture of local rum and some kind of mixer (usually coke) called a “jam jar” served in the actual old jam jar.  It was really good.  However after an extended dinner and a few jam jars we still had a couple of hours to go before the party even started.  So we missed the extravaganza opting for an earlier night.

the next day we went back to the beach after sleeping in and there was a light rain.  So we covered for shelter and used the time to catch up on e-mails, travel planning, etc.  The next day we would be leaving for the Nha Trang airport to go to our last stop in Vietnam, Saigon.