Burgers, Busses, and Underwater Beauty...

Now this bus ride has to go down in the record books. Throughout our travels we have endured some wild careless driving and been pulled over for a variety of deserving reasons. This guy however should have been locked away for his reckless road warring. You have to wonder if many of the locals have a touch of suicidal tendencies with their kamikaze ways. The route was rough and winding and although he was driving a 40-50 passenger bus we weaved in and out of traffic nearly colliding with transport trucks and an array of oncoming and with-going traffic. He clipped people on their motos and checked in his rearview to verify they were still upright and therefore apparently good to go. He didn’t get so lucky with one of the young ladies he hit and swiped alongside the bus as he was pulled over for it shortly down the road. He may have been written up but more than likely things went as they tend to go here, and he paid them a couple bucks before he jumped back in the driver seat to finish his route in record time. Arriving in Nha Trang we were happy to be alive and were seriously re-evaluating further bus travel.

The best way to describe Nha Trang is the “Surfer’s Paradise” of Vietnam. The town is a relatively upscale tourist locale with a long swooping beach which runs the length of the city. There is a well kept promenade and countless restaurants, beach bars, and accommodations to suite any budget. Our main goal here in Nha Trang was to get some more Scuba Diving in. As soon as we arrived, we checked in to a great hotel with a 24hour restaurant, beautiful rooftop terrace, and a room with all the comforts for 12 dollars/night. We were immediately introduced to the range of tours/sightseeing packages available and signed up for some diving for the following day. One thing for sure, you can’t beat the price of diving here. For a mere $35 each, we were promised: hotel pick up, 1 hour offshore boat travel, 2 fully equipped fun dives (for certified divers) with a dive master, lunch, and return. An early start in the morning as we were picked up at 7:30am, we arrived at the harbour to find that the two of us were the only people who had signed up that day. We felt like high rollers buying the whole thing out, having the huge boat and all its crew to ourselves. We dove at 2 different locations off Mun Island and both were great spots. We saw an array of vibrant reef fish and colourful coral. We had a terrific lunch of stir fried beef and veg, tuna, egg omelet, and the staple steamed rice. We had a wonderful day and agreed that for this value we would prolong our stay in Nha Trang and most definitely get out on the water at least once more time before leaving. We thanked our Master Diver, Huan, and arranged to join him again after one day’s rest. We spent our day off walking throughout the city. We visited the Long Son Pagoda where we found ourselves stuck in a wicked afternoon rainstorm. The rain was a welcomed break from the intense heat. The storm and wind were awesome, and according to the monks, this weather brings about good luck. The pagoda was one of the loveliest we’ve seen so far. It has a beautiful temple, huge reclining Buddha, and enormous sitting Buddha perched high in the hills. The views from here were amazing as it overlooks the whole city, definitely a special place. We intended on visiting some Cham ruins but since Thailand, Laos, and Cambodian are celebrating the New Year, we decided we weren’t up for the crowds and enjoyed the remainder of our day lazing on our sunny rooftop terrace.

We were geared up this morning to head out and secure two more open water dives under our belts. It wasn’t a private trip today as there were 6 other divers onboard but it is always nice to get to know divers of different experience levels. We rented an underwater camera so we hoped visibility would be good enough to catch some vivid underwater life. Again we were paired up with Dive Master Huan and had him to ourselves which was great. Huan mentioned that since we had dove with him the other day, he would keep things fresh on this dive by going to a greater depth as well as experiencing our first cavern swim throughs. Our first dive was at a new location, Madonna Rock, although visibility wasn’t great at only 7 meters, we still saw so much life, and were both stoked by the exciting cave. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of fish within the darkness of the cavern. The dive was colourful and cool as we reached a maximum depth of 20 meters. We are finding that each dive is different from the last and variety of locations and dive characteristics makes you hungry for more. During our surface interval on the boat, we munched some fruit and reflected on the highlights of our first dive. For our second dive, we returned to Moray Bay where we had been yesterday. To make things a little more exciting for the two of us, the boat dropped us about 200 meters away from where it anchored and we caught up travelling the distance underwater. This spot had much better visibility with lots of sunlight and we enjoyed another great dive. We gained a whole new respect for underwater photography that’s for sure. Not only are your subjects moving quickly as they swim around but you are battling light, visibility, and your own motion due to water current. Needless to say we didn’t shoot any stunners. After another satisfying day of diving, we have now completed 8 open water dives and look forward to many more to come. We got cleaned up and spent the remainder of our day winding down on the hotel terrace. Dinner tonight was a real treat! We headed down the street to the Buffalo Steak House…Steak is well beyond our budget but we shared a gorgeous salad and cheeseburger with fries. After 2 ½ month getting by on noodles and rice we devoured the New Zealand beef like it was our last supper. Man, was it a refreshingly delicious and satisfying meal. Yummy! Mmm…