Nha Trang - Vietnam Part 4

Hello everyone. Sorry for the late posting, internet has been up and down lately. So lets finish up my final story of this tropical paradise town in Southeast Asia. Below are random pictures of this beautiful little city.

This is a view from our hotel room of Nha Trang Bay.

Here is a view of the main street by the ocean side. Our two star hotel is on the left side.

A poster of a fishing day trip at a tourist booking place. Next time I'll try one of these things.

One of many local dive operations in Nha Trang.

Paradise on the beach!

Me and Anne standing on the hot sand.

Looks like Kuta beach in Bali!

We hit the local market to see what we can find. One of the first things I noticed were vendors selling these coral skeletons as decorations, hopefully these weren't deliberately killed for this purpose.

All kinds of sea shells by the sea shore for sale. Note the giant dried red starfishes for sale.

Dried seahorsed for medicinal use. Vietnam actually has farms to grow out these things. Also Vietnam is one of few countries where sea horses can legally be exported using cites.

Dried sea cucumbers anyone?

Bottles of cobra snakes and other strange creatures for drinking.

Here is a close up of the snakes in the bottles. People actually drink the alcohol in these things - supposedly good for your sex drive!

Do I look like a dork or what?!

View of the market.

Dried toke geckos anyone? I'm not sure how you would eat these things, maybe roast over fire?

Dried pipefish to along with the dried sea horses.

Here is one dried sea creature I would eat - squid!

Large lobster skeletons for sale.

Even little shark jaws were for sale!

Check out the monster mantis shrimp! A super delicacy in Asian countries.

Can you guess what is in this bag?

Oh man, just not cool!

More coral skeletons for sale.

Polished green snail shells. The Tonga fishery brought some in from Australia to start aquaculturing these. It was only a slight success. I did see one large specimen in the wild though.

Me and Anne at night on a bicycle rickshaw in town!

Here is Anne buying steamed corn before heading back to the hotel.

Beachfront of a 5 star hotel!

Some locals taking a break from the hot sun under a coconut tree. These local sell anything from fruits to jewelry to sea foods on the beaches.

Billboard of my hero Jet Li posing with San Miguel beer at the airport.

A picture of the Vietnam planes.

Goodbye Nha Trang!

Conclusion

Ok guys that is it for this series. Nha Trang will be one of the hotspots to visit in Vietnam in the future. There is a lot of money being pumped in to make this a world class vacation spot.

Coming up next are coral pictures from a recent shipment. We will start with awesome zoos and palys.

Cheers,
Eddie

New Video Uploaded

A new video of our recent corals collection in our Jakarta's holding facility has been uploaded. As usual, it's located at the bottom of this blog right above the previous video. Enjoy, guys!

Nha Trang - Vietnam Part 3!

Hello everyone. So let's finish off the "day in Nha Trang Bay".

A fellow tour boat parked in the same area as us.

We got back to our boat from looking at the reefs. Some of the other tourists were in the water swimming.

Nearby was this rest stop.

A floating rest area. Note the water slide on the left of the picture.
Some of other floating platforms were makeshift houses. People live on these things fishing for a living.

And finally lunch was served. The bench chairs were straightened out to form a table.

And here is the congee made with the urchin eggs. This little bowl cost $3, quite expensive considering the whole tour only cost $6 -$10. Good thing the other foods were free though.

And here is a close up of the urchin eggs. I must say, it tasted pretty good!


Some entertainment after lunch. Kind of old equipment but the guys were good!

It turned out that the crew knew how to play old folklore songs from every country! Our tour guide started out by singing an old Vietnamese song.

Next up was an Australian! They tried to get me to sing a Korean song but I told them I didn't know the lyrics:) Surprisingly I was the only Korean on board. We had tourists from all over the world - France, Holland, Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, American Vietnamese, Australia, and even a Kiwi (New Zealand).

After our entertainment, everybody went swimming. Note the tour guide serving wine in the water!


Then we were off again. Me and Anne, enjoying a nice breeze!

A close up of that amusement park Vinpearl Island.

Another shot to the left of the picture above. Note the ferry on the left.

More construction being done on another part of the island. Definitely someone has some serious money to play with!

And here is our final destination, a kick back lounge area where you can swim in the bay or just relax on a beach chair.

A floating platform to play around.

Check out these dragon fruits growing over the ledge on this hillside of the island. I bet you didn't know that dragon fruits are a cactus fruit!

After about an hour of resting, it was time to go home. Fresh fruits were served on our way back to the mainland.

A local fishermen on its way out to do night fishing.

The same little van that picked us up took us back to our "2 star" hotel!

After cleaning up, we hit this local restaurant for dinner. I tried to take a picture of the crew but they were kind of shy.

After dinner, we took a walk along the main beach street. A carnival was going on!

We stopped at this table for a little gambling.

And here is Anne, trying her luck at "Nha Trang roulette"!

Conclusion

Ok guys that is it for today. The whole tour for $6-$10 is totally worth its money. A great way to meet people and have fun on the bay. I will do one more post about Nha Trang and then it's back to "Coral Adventures"!

Cheers,
Eddie