Nha Trang

We flew from Saigon to Nha Trang and learned to love Vietnam Airlines. You do not have to take off your shoes or display your liquids in a quart-size zip lock. Oh, and they feed you.

It took our taxi driver a bit to find The World Hotel, and it is almost nothing like its website, but it turned out to be a good place to stay for 5 nights. It is in the Vietnamese tourist section of this beach town, rather than the western section, which turned out to be a great location to learn about the culture. Lots to see and great food.

Our room at The World Hotel



The view from our room included a side street and a "square".







This restaurant was set up on the sidewalk each day for dinner. They appeared to feature steamed duck dishes.




Here's the square, which was very busy most times of the day.





Each morning, we ate breakfast at at a place across the street from our hotel ~ that is, after we had milk coffee and tea from a street vendor around the corner.



Brad went to the IIFET conference at Nha Trang University and I wandered the streets. I followed my nose and the Vietnamese on the street to busy places for lunch and tried my luck at the menu. It was delicious!

The conference had a dinner the 2 nights, and for the other 3 we ventured out. We ended up at Lac Canh all 3 nights, grilling all sorts of marinated meats, seafood, and veggies on a table grill, eating it with rice paper or miscellaneous rice and drinking local beer. Excellent! (Lac Canh is where we got the chicken head served to us on our plate of roast chicken. I saw food on another table that was not on our English translated menu and asked about it. Roasted chicken. Okay, bring us that as one of our dishes...and they did :-)

One night we swam in the ocean for over an hour, as a spur of the moment idea on our walk back from dinner. It is so very very hot that only a few westerners can be found at the beach during the day. The locals only seem to go swimming before breakfast!

On Friday afternoon, Brad and I, along with Brian (a friend from IIFET) rented motorcycles to drive out of town. Brad and Brian rented automanual and I rented an automatic (scooter). We drove out 20 km to the waterfall Suoi Ba Ho, where locals led us up to the top and toted beer in coolers to sell to us. What a great day!