Day 22 - Return of the sunshine

The last I wrote we were experiencing the end of tropical cyclone leaving us little to do in Nha Trang. The following day we'd just about had enough of waiting around and booked ourselves on a day tour to see some islands, hoping for further improvements in the weather. We were expecting a civilised affair touring some islands with some beach time.

Once at the dock we boarded the boat, where we met a really mixed bag of tourists from all over the world – mostly younger travelers. By this point the skies had cleared, and the baking sun was beating down - the glorious weather had returned, and just in the nick of time! Turns out these day tours are more kind of 18-30's style booze boats that try to deliver a non-stop party atmosphere. We were all nursing hangovers from polishing off a litre of Jonny-Walker in our room waiting out the weather the night before, but were still up for it. Over the P.A. a chap introduces himself as the 'funky monkey', and to be fair, he delivered on the fun-factor! They took us to an island a few miles off the coast where we did some snorkelling. By this point we'd had a few beers already. Not much life to see down there (too deep), but it was clean, clear, and electric blue.

Villages at sea where people are born, live and die - farming fish.
 

The day went on like this, stopping from place to place. More beer, more islands, more beaches. They even turned the bench seats on the boat into a large table and gave us all a slap-up meal. Then it really started to get surreal. They whipped out some knackered old instruments (electric guitar, and a drum-kit made from kitchen pots-amazing how good it sounded!), and played some classic rock songs, mixed with some more traditional Vietnamese songs. It was hilarious, and we finished with some karaoke, singing 'Frere Jacques' in the language of every nationality on the boat. I did the British version. No idea what the words are?

Crazy band on the boat – funky monkey & his crew.





After all this excitement, they opened the floating-bar (a kind of large floating ring), with our drummer as the barman, dishing out free cocktails, pouring jugs of the stuff down the neck of anyone who dared go close. It really was just what we needed (the day, not the cocktails), and we met some nice people, including some chaps from Austria and Denmark, who had a following of two lovely German girls, three sisters from Oz, and blond bird from Croydon (who'd of thought). We also met a nice group of Vietnamese girls, a lady from China, and an interesting French-Japanese couple. All in all it was a good day, and helped make up for the recent days of shitty weather.

Getting tanked up at the floating bar.
 

After our day of fun we decided we had to start moving north again. After a lie-in to sleep of the amount of booze consumed, we were back on the road, this time with good weather overhead. We headed north along the coast, which started off a bit dangerous - there was a lot of traffic and the wind was nearly knocking us on our asses. Our destination was 240km away, so we'd conceded that we weren't likely to make it all the way and would stop somewhere en-route. After a few hours, the roads started to clear up, and we could really start to enjoy the scenery. And boy what scenery. These roads really are a bikers paradise; massive mountain ranges covered in rain-forest, snaking roads around prominent rock formations, steep hills into sloping valleys, rivers, coast. It was magical, but the place we stopped halfway was expensive and there was nothing to do, so we decided to press on to Quy Nho'n before nightfall. We arrive and found a nice little hotel on the coast (one of the nicest rooms so far).

Updated visual-journey progress - the scenic mountain route we drove.

Bizarrely, it turns out the owner speaks fluent Czech! The guy had studied and lived in Prague for 5 years. Apparently he's very good. Even more bizarre – there's a Czech restaurant here that serves Budvar, and Goulash. The boys were most amused :)

Proud as punch! A touch of home for the boys from Prague, here in Vietnam.

Quy Nho'n is a strange city. It's quite large, but not in any of our (three different) guidebooks. It's a very Vietnamese city, which is dominated by the university here. They’re not used to seeing many tourists, especially Europeans, and the town certainly isn't 'designed' for us. The place we ate lunch today was another finger pointing exercise, and we're pretty sure we all accidentally ordered and ate dog meat :S We didn't recognise the word, but it had tiny photos (of the final dish, not a pouty-eyed pup), and it looked good, so we all went for variants of the same thing. It tasted a bit like pork, but definitely wasn't (had loads of skin still on the meat – packed with dark hair follicles). It was okay I guess – a little tough, and the meat wasn't very plentiful.

Since being here we're been touring around, venturing into tiny farming towns, and sleeping fishing villages, where we always seem to be like celebrities. But the people are always friendly, and the scenery to die for. The beaches are nice here too; the sea is a little rough, but a refreshing plunge to cool down in the midday heat is a regular event. A couple of beers in hammocks later, and one ancient temple, we're back off to the Czech restaurant for dinner.

The ancient (and sadly unprotected, so pretty wrecked) temple we visited today.

Tomorrow we're likely to hit the road again, this time heading in-land again to take the Ho Chi Minh trail that will continue to take us north, as the section of coast ahead apparently has little to offer. TTFN.

More pictures by Lukas