Nha Trang sites & the mud baths

After Saigon and the Mekong Delta we flew up to Nha Trang. I remember hearing about it while we were at war with the Vietnamese and also, my brother-in-law was stationed there so, of course, I was really interested to see what we would find there.

Our flight was uneventful and quick, an hour. When we had originally made our plans we were going to take a train and then soon found out that is would be a 12 hour trip and the cost would

be the same as flying so, considering we have such a strong grasp of the obvious, we flew.

The airport is about 20 miles from the center of the city so it was nice that a driver was waiting at the airport to take us to our hotel which, is across the street from the beach so that means we had a 'beach view' from our room.

The city of Nha Trang is really nice and the layout is primarily along the beach.

Our driver dropped us at our hotel so we could check in and have some breakfast and then he returned to take us to the Cham Towers and then to 'mud baths'. The only thing I regret is

that we only took a couple of photos at the mud baths and none of us sitting in the tubs, etc. (back to the mud baths a little later).

We walked to the top of the hill where the Cham Towers are located and toured the grounds and looked down on the harbor. I was thinking how this area probably was the same in the 60's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po_Nagar to learn more click on this link and see it from the harbor.

After that we went to the mud baths. This is one of the places you say to yourself that you would want to return to. The grounds are wonderful and the choice is to either share a tub or have an individual one. So you get into a wooden tub of warm mud and stay there until

someone comes and tells you it is time to get out then it is off to lay on chaise lounges so the mud dries - we couldn't figure out why we needed to let the mud dry but then they are the experts and so we followed the rules. After that we showered off and the herded - if you can imagine Angie and me being herded - to an area

up a small arroyo/canyon to a private hot tub and I mean hot - secluded from other hot tub goers. We figured that we could have boiled eggs in this hot tub. No matter how hard we tried we never really were able to submerge ourselves and our skin that touched the water still hasn't recovered. We then waited on chaise lounges for the massage ladies. The massages were really wonderful and while they were going on the ladies continually reminded us how hard they were working and we could give them a large tip if we wanted.

Now we are back with our driver - who speaks almost no english - and we are wanting to buy a bottle of wine, you can only imagine how interesting that was to get the point across but we prevailed and he took us to a wine shop - see photo of the guys doing a wine tasting.

Back to our hotel we enjoyed a glass of wine on the veranda and then off to walk on the beach.

The hotel people suggested a restaurant for us just a few blocks from where we were

staying. A bit of a challenge to get there considering street lights are not really prevalent on the side streets and the sidewalks are also challenging but we made it and had a wonderful dinner.

Again back at our hotel to see people arriving for a wedding reception - on their motor bikes. At the reception they were enjoying Karaoke, really enjoying Karaoke - I guess it is an Asian thing.

Now it was time to get some sleep as we had an early flight to Da Nang the next morning.