Diving Take 2! - Vietnam

You have probably already seen the skewers of crocodile and ostrich that we had as part of our diving lunch but I thought I would finally fill you in on the rest of our time diving in Nha Trang.

Now proud owners of our PADI certificates we headed to the dive shops in the centre of town and settled on one which was actually run by Vietnamese divers, and booked 4 dives over a 2 day period. Brian and Roald also decided to join us for the first day and dive with us.

Early the next morning we jumped in a minibus to the docks and hopped on one of the many wooden boats, most of them were set up for day trips to the surrounding islands but ours had all the necessary diving equipment of course! We had an awesome dive master Phu, who was very experienced, and the first day dives were great. The difference in the water was very marked from our experience in Cambodia. Now we were in the South China sea instead of the Gulf of Thailand so the water was slightly cooler and definitely more salty, I only swallowed it once and made sure I would never do it again! The four of us dived with our dive master, and after losing Brian at the start temporarily due to a little confusion and some poor visibility we were on our way. We saw a lot of different life to our previous dives. We saw a lot more sea cucumbers and coral, but unfortunately the sea urchins were still very abundant too! Our dive master was obviously very knowledgeable on the area and the wildlife. He picked up one of the sea cucumbers and got it to stick to his hand so we could watch its muscles constrict. I got a real sense of its movement and it looked a lot more graceful than I expected. We observed an ugly and dangerous scorpionfish hiding in the rocks waiting for it's dinner to come by, and on our second dive of the day Rob got very excited after having spotted a pair of seahorses, although they turned out to be pipefish (these look like straightened out seahorses and weren't quite as rare!) and we had a very enjoyable encounter with a seal faced pufferfish who we chased around the coral for several minutes.

The second day proved to be just as wonderful as the first, although we were missing Roald and Brian no one else was assigned to our dive master so I think as a result we got a much more interesting and exciting exploration of the water. We were diving a small distance away from a little rocky island called the Madonna Island by the dive instructors. This was because the formation had to hills to it resembling Madonna's famous bra!

In this dive we went down to the lowest either of us had been - just over 19m - actually a little deeper than our certificate allows, but it was fantastic. On our way down Phu found some small stripy shrimps, so he got us to hold our hands out still on the rock. As I did this the little shrimps no bigger than a 10p piece climbed on to my finger nails and I could feel them tickling as they moved their little antenna around and nibbled my nails. It was explained when we got to the surface that they are little cleaning shrimps and they eat dead skin off fish, so they were giving my cuticles a clean!! We swum around and explored the sea bed for a little while, this time is was more difficult as there were a lot more rocky outcrops and coral to negotiate and I had to be very careful as I moved around so I wouldn't hit and damage anything. We then got to a point which must have been right under the island. We looked and in front of us was a cave, our dive master beckoned us inside. It was very small with a hole either side, so we swum in through one side and out the other. Inside though was beautiful. There was a large school of small yellow fish right above our heads and above that was the roof of the cave where you could see our air bubbles, which resembled mercury moving around. The whole experience was mesmerizing. I felt very lucky to have a dive instructor that trusted us so much on only our sixth dive to give us that experience. Can´t wait to dive again!!!!

Post-dive Partying

We also had two fantastic nights out in Nha Trang. It was sad when we realised this would definitely be the last time on this trip we would see Brian and Roald, our friends since we arrived in Laos, as our time restrains and routes were now taking us on completely different paths. So we had a couple of great nights out with them and a new found friend Nguyen who worked in the dive shop. The first night we spent playing Jenga and pool in one of the local bars. We actually managed to beat Jenga and made it so no more moves were possible. Brian was the most excited as he had never managed this, I am pleased that I could share the moment with him!

We also had another night where Nguyen took us to a local restaurant to show us some of the local cuisine. She translated the menu for us, much of the food was very unusual such as pig stomach, frog and wild pig. We got her to pick some of her favourites for us to try. We ended up with a frog dish, a venison dish, some spicy beef and a spicy fried rice. We also had these wonderful spring rolls with a delicious dipping sauce. It such a feast, it was so tasty and it was nice that there were no other tourists it felt very authentic. To add to the enjoyment a local guy turned up on a bicycle with a huge speaker balanced on the back - a very mobile karaoke system! We watched and listened in amusement as he sang for the diners then some of the locals did a turn! Later we headed to a few more bars, and ended the evening playing pool and drinking cocktails. It was a great evening and a fantastic way to end our time with two great friends that we may not see now for a while.