Goodbye Hoi An & Hello Nha Trang

Hoi An to Nha Trang – Backpacking Vietnam

Waking with another hangover
Visiting the Before and Now bar
Leaving Hoi An and ariving in Nha Trang
Visiting the mysterious VIN PEARL

Waking with another hangover

Hoi An to Nha Trang – Backpacking Vietnam: After a solid night on the drink with some of my backpacking friends, which involved a visit to the wild Happy King Kong Bar, I awoke with a solid headache. Not surprising with all the dodgy moonshine vodka and whiskey I was consuming.

The guest house I was staying had a small swimming pool which was quite luxurious as oppose to some of the usual dumps I have been staying in, so I had a long swim which really helped my hangover.

I eventually got all my bags packed to leave and left them at the front reception of the guest house. However, I had a number of loose ends to tie up before leaving Hoi An.

I needed to go to Adong Silk to pick up my shirts, Yaly to pick up 2 of my suits and Imressions to pick up a casual jacket. Luckily I still had my old school vietnamese push bike, which is a must if you want to be able to get around Hoi An with ease.

Visiting the Before and Now bar

After picking all of my tailored clothes up I needed some food and another drink to ease what was left of the hangover. I found a very funky little cafe/bar in Le Loi Street in the middle of Hoi An, its called the “Before and Now” bar and they serve a great pizza, fresh cold beer, with some cool tunes and great atmosphere. The staff are very friendly and even asked me to come party with them down on the beach later in the evening, unfortunately I was due to leave for Nha Trang in the afternoon.

Anyway the Before and Now bar was great and I highly recommend the place. They also have some really cool art work in the bar which I believe is for sale, check out the picture below for an example.

I took my push bike back to the rental place and headed back to the guest house to get ready to leave Hoi An for Nha Trang.

Leaving Hoi An and ariving in Nha Trang

I arranged to catch a local bus to the airport which took us through the small city of Denang. I would have like to have been able to spend some time in Denang but time did not permit. It looks like quite a nice little city sitting by the bay.

After arriving at the Denag airport I didnt have to wait around long which was good because it was a fairly uneventful and small airport with nothing to do. On the small plane I had 3 seats to myself which was good so I could stretch out.

Before long I had arrived in sunny Nha Trang, I got my bags and a taxi to take me into town. The taxi driver tried to charge me $20.00 and I wasnt happy with this since I have been paying far less taxi prices throughout the rest of Vietnam, I told him that I was only willing to pay $10.00 and we both agreed to settle on $13.00. I still felt that I was way over charged.

Nha Trang gave me a real touristy, beachy and relaxed chilled out vibe.

As I walked down the streets of Nha Trang I randomly bumped into Jen, one of my aussie backpacker friends that I originally met in Hanoi. I agreed to meet back up with her and Clarke and Toby once I had settled in. I booked into a small guest house which costs 180,000 Dong per night – it wasnt too bad since it was located in a fairly nice area of Nha Trang just a stones throw from the beach. Since Nha Trang is more touristy you have to expect slightly inflated prices.

Visiting the mysterious VIN PEARL

I met up with Jen, Clarke and Toby down at the beach and we immediately decided to hire motorbikes and headed off around the coast line towards a huge “gondolla” which I noticed on the drive in from the airport. The “gondolla” travelled from the mainland right across the water over to a small island which had a gigantic sign located in the hills very similar to the H.O.L.L.Y.W.O.O.D. sign in the hills of Los Angeles. However these letter signs spelt out V.I.N. P.E.A.R.L.

We had no idea what this mysterious Vin Pear was but we were eager to find out. We quickly learnt that Vin Pearl was a massive theme and waterpark all rolled into one. Once we got there we headed straight for the water park to cool off. It was quite an unusual feeling as the park was so large in size yet it seemed so deserted of people. It was like a ghost town.

That didnt stop us from soldiering on and going nuts on the waterslides and half pipe tobogan slides….so much fun.

After Vin Pearl we headed back to our guest houses for an afternoon rest, unfortunately I have been battling an irritable head cold which was at its peak today so the rest was well needed. Especially since the plan for tonight is to head up the hippest beach club in town “Sailor Club”.

Sailor Club on the Beach in Nha Trang

We all agreed to meet up in a few hours to party the night away.

This club was situated right on the beach and they has some great DJ’s and entertainment on that night to coincide with the Miss Universe Pageant which was taking place in Nha Trang. Needless to say that the eye candy was nothing short of spectacular.

The crew met up and got to drinking and dancing….to be quite honest the night ended up quite blurry but I do have a warm fuzzy feeling when I think about this night, so it must have been a cracker of a night!!

Next day we just chilled out by the beach, sank a few more beers and basically just relaxed and enjoyed the wonderful dream we were living.

***

Josh Boorman

Editor-in-chief

Backpacking Addictz

admin@backpackingaddictz.com

Facebook.com/backpackaddictz

Twitter: @backpackaddictz

Backpacking Addictz is a website set up by backpackers for the use of backpackers. On this site you will find a lot of very valuable backpacking information surrounding different destinations, countries and experiences from people’s different backpacking adventures throughout the world.