Saturday morning we had a flight from Ho Chi Minh to Nha Trang so we decided to take it easy the night before. We grabbed our two free beers on the rooftop and went down the street to the market for some dinner. I checked off another ‘first’ from the list and ordered ostrich along with chicken. So glad I did because it was surprisingly unbelievable!
We dropped our stuff in the room and took a quick walk down to the beach (which is two blocks away from our hostel). It’s a Vietnamese holiday for the next week so it was packed! The island in the background, Vinpearl, is where one of the biggest water parks in Asia is. That night there was a 21st year celebration for a famous bar on the beach called the Sailing Club. They set up a huge stage right on the sand and there was probably around 1,000 gathered around. After the concert we finished off the night at a dive bar not too far from our hostel called the Why Not Bar.
Today has been my favorite excursion so far. We rented mopeds and rode up north about an hour and a half to the Ba Ho waterfalls in the Khanh Hoa Province. The traffic patterns here are the same as the ones in Ho Chi Min – non existent. Being a Jersey guy and having dealt with crazy drivers in New York City, I like to think I handled it pretty well. The coastline on the ride up was one of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen. We stopped for a quick fuel fill up at a local village near the mountain. The only English words these people knew were “1..2..3..Go” which led us back to our favorite game of charades.
As we were walking up the mountain I was thinking to myself how I needed to make time for some sort of physical activity this week since I haven’t been to the gym in weeks… Little did I know the workout I was about to get. It took us about thirty minutes to get to the top, but it involved us doing a lot of jumping, hanging and climbing than I ever could have imagined. Once at the top the view was pretty amazing. There was a little lagoon at the top about ten feet deep in the middle. Clearly we needed to jump off of something into it…. So that was my first cliff jumping experience. The rock was about 50 feet high (it may or may not have taken me 15 mins to decide to actually go for it). I can’t upload any videos on here so you’ll have to check Facebook for that one.
