27th February: Dalat, Vietnam to Nha Trang, Vietnam

Yet again, we were the first bus pick up this morning. Our driver was another very friendly guy and drove safely and steadily. Every single bus company seems to have reviews about how rude and dangerous they are but that’s not been our experience on any journey so far in Vietnam.

Meandering through the hills on the way out of Dalat, we passed flower growing areas, villages full of poly tunnels, and of course, flowering coffea plants. As we gradually descended below 1,200 metres marking the lower bounds of the prime coffee growing area, the scenery grew more wild and untouched. Mountainous cloud forests and sheer granite towered over switchbacks. Giant white waterfalls poured down over rockfaces and through ravines.

We stopped twice, once before and once after the biggest descent. At the bottom, we had 15 minutes beside a deep river at the point where it ceased being a fast-flowing mountain torrent and began to meander towards the coast. We would do the same on our way to Nha Trang.

This is a beach resort city, very popular with Chinese, Russian, and South Korean tourists. Our room, which we were kindly allowed to check in to 45 minutes early, was on the 10^th floor – our highest since China.

We only had 24 hours in Nha Trang, to break up our onward journey to Quy Nhon, and we were determined to make the most of it. We’d deliberately booked a hotel very close to the beach. First though, lunch! The restaurant we went to had a fish tank below the floor and right beside our table. Some of the poor multi-coloured inhabitants were over a metre long. They kept coming to the surface and seemed as if they were asking us for food. I was constantly thinking that I’d fall in or drop something! Lunch was a delicious tofu scramble with (#instagramnonsense) charcoal sourdough; a rice bowl with breaded tofu, seeds, veggie sushi, and mushrooms; and a fresh dragon fruit smoothie.

By mid-afternoon, we were on the beach. The tide was quite high, limiting the expanse of golden sand somewhat. Still, despite its popularity, there was plenty of room for us to chill. There was fairly substantial surf, which was just enough for the people having fun in the water. The tides here are interesting. Due to the shape of the ocean bowl here and the way the tides interact with the coastline, the 12-hour and 24-hour components of the tides are out of sync. This means that sometimes there are two low and two high tides per day, or when they fall into positive reinforcement, just one more extreme version of each per day. In between, all kinds of funky things happen! Half an hour before sunset, the locals came out to join the foreign tourists. The beach became a hive of activity for dancing, exercising, and all manner of sports. Families ate together, as the heat fell out of the day. We had a light snack on the way back too – a Cu Hu Dua salad, and pumpkin soup – but decided to save our energy for the morning.