Na Trang- Same Same but different

Greetings from the beautiful sandy beaches of Na Trang, about 5 hours North of Mui Ne Beach, where I left you last. We arrived here Friday night, expecting it to be much the same as Lazy Mui Ne Beach. Well we were wrong- The beach is about 10x bigger and looks alot like Surfers Paradise but more paradisy. The sand is whiter, there are coconut palms running the length of the beach and it is extremely clean. Mui Ne is what you would expect of an Asian beach, coarse dark golden sand and a moderate amount of litter. But this beach is something that you would expect in the Bahamas.

Not only boasting one of the most beautiful beach in Vietnam, there are 71 islands off the coast which are all excessible by boat. Yesterday we visited three, the names of which escape me now. After travelling over jade waters we arrived at the first island where we fed Ostriches and Deer. Then off to the second island which was the main stop of the day. There we watched a bear show which was more sad that cute because it doesn't seem like something a beer was born to do. Plus the muzzles were a little depressing. That aside, I had an awesome day there. I got to ride an Ostrich! Yes you heard me right, I rode an Ostrich and I was FREAKIN AWESOME.

From there we had a chance to frolick in the ocean and chill out in comfy deckchairs and talk to our fellow travellers. Lucky for us one couple was German and spoke english because all of the other toursits were vietnamese! Then we were treated to a Vietnamese set menu under the palms shared between 6 people each. There was bbq prawns, squid, braised fish in tomato puree and the main event- the traditional seafood hotpot. All of this was topped off with Mulberry wine from the Dalat region. After too many beers during the day with our new German friends and the mulberry wine, it was back to the deckchairs for a siesta.

After a brief sojourn, we were back on to the boat to the whole reason I booked the Tour- Hon Loa or Monkey Island. Oh. My. God. The place is crazy and covered in monkeys and they are cheeky as you can imagine. One of them took food straight out of the German man's bag as soon as they realised it was there. Another waited for some Asian toursits to fall alseep on their deckchairs, silently creeped in and nearly made off with their bag of fruit they had on the table. Lucky they woke up in time! We all had an opportunity to feed them but it was best not to do it by hand, they are still wild and a bite could give you rabies. Plus I must admit the sheer number of monkeys and them charging at you when they saw you had food made it very easy to throw the food and back away! There was a monkey show (of course, the Vietnamese seem to love training animals to do weird stuff) but this was more entertaining as it was truely amazing what these monkeys could do- walking on stills, walking tightropes blindfolded, riding bikes- pretty much anything. The wild monkeys seemed interested too because they were ducking in and around the roof trying to get a better look. Whether that was at the show or what tourists had food is another question.

It was an truely awesome day, action packed, fun filled and surrounded by the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen. The photos do it no justice, from every angle there are green covered mountain/islands in the foreground and in the distance. The German man we were travelling with had been to the Caribbean, Mauritius etc and said that this had it all over them all. Vietnam is really one of the most diverse places in the world, you'll never know wht you are going to get