right: the sunrise from hotel window
The next morning we woke up early and had breakfast. This is something that Tien and her brother had made in Toronto, but we had this for dinner or lunch usually... hahaha... because we can't wake up early enough to make it.
It's similar to rice noodles rolls in Chinese dim sum, but this one is more light, with just minced pork and mushroom filling and some bean sprouts and fish sauce. But the thing is that it's quite difficult to make, especially in our little kitchen in Toronto where we had to make do with the frying pan we had.... but thinking back on the days we spent in the kitchen, it was really fun too!
After breakfast, we walked back to our hotel to wait for the tour bus to pick us up. We joined a local tour to tour three islands in the bay of Nha Trang.
Our first stop was to an island where they raised South African ostriches and deer. These ostriches were MEAN! We feed them leaves and they were strong and nearly grabbed the whole branch out of my hand. Also their head moved so fast as they were pecking/biting that it was quite difficult to get a good photo of them. Don't ask me why there are ostriches and deers in Vietnam, I find it quite strange myself. I wonder what the purpose of them being in Vietnam is?
Another thing, don't ask me what the names are of the island we visited that day, I couldn't catch them from the tour guide.
Our next stop was on an island where we had lunch and had a chance to swim in the water, and do a bunch of other things. The island was almost like a mini amusement park, you can hike up the mountain to a waterfall, there were some vegetable gardens with bitter melons, chili peppers and other veggies, there was a mini circus with a bear performing, an elephant who you can ride or have him lift you up with his trunk, ride ostriches, try being pulled by a speedboat with a parachute.
top right: mini green chili peppers grown in the garden
bottom left: orchid garden; bottom right: waiting for our sugarcane drink
top middle and right: ten o'clock flowers, they only bloom at ten o'clock - I don't know if Tien was joking with me or not, it just so happened to be a little after ten when we spotted these flowers... hehehe... but i also like the green grass/stalks around the flowers
bottom left: water lilies - I always mixed up lotus and water lilies, I kept referring to them as the same things, but they are different. Water lilies grow closer to the water surface.
The mini amusement park/resort was quite clean and quite, not crowded at all. And the sun was so bright and hot, the water was actually not very cold.
One of the cool things I did on the trip was to try the speedboat parachute, where I have a parachute strapped to me and pulled by a speedboat. I've always wanted to try that, even when I was young and went to Thailand and other countries, but my mom always said it was dangerous and didn't allow me. This time as she wasn't here and because I REALLY wanted to do it, so I did it! hehe..... The view from up high was spectacular, too bad I couldn't bring a camera up with me.... I would love to show you the view of the surrounding valleys, rivers and shores, it was truly beautiful.
Then it was Tien & Khai's turn, here they are ready, set, RUNNNNN, and up into the sky!
For lunch, we had ostrich meat along with other dishes. There was an ostrich hotpot, you may think it's so hot, how can you eat hotpot. For some reason, the weather was hot, but after swimming and a shower, it was nice and cool and sitting under the shade of a HUGE tree, it was very comfortable. The ostrich hotpot contained a lot of unidentifiable parts, which I didn't enjoy as much, but the ostrich meat was good.
After lunch, we went to another island which is inhabited by over a 1000 monkeys. The monkeys were raised there by the Russians who used the monkeys as lab monkeys to test vaccines. A little scary sounding, and actually the monkeys are quite vicious. They grabbed the food quickly, and there was a mix of corn kernels and peanuts and they picked all the peanuts and didn't eat the corn kernels! One monkey even bit Tien's hand!
On that island, there's even a dog race. Some of the tourists placed bets on the dogs and they raced down a track and boy are they fast, I could only catch the last one to cross the finish line on my camera! hehe....
After that, we made our way back to the hotel and again had a little nap after the long day out in the sun. For dinner that night, we went to another little store that served Beer Chicken hotpot. This I have to admit was little disappointing. The soup based was supposed to have a beer flavor to it, but I couldn't taste it, and the chicken was bland and we just cooked chicken and Tong Choi (morning glory leaves) in it. We also had a shredded chicken salad, which was again disappointing because they put A LOT of uncooked onion in it and very little chicken and herbs and so I could only taste onion....
One interesting thing was this thing that looks like an egg yolk.... and well it is technically the egg yolk, but it's before the egg formed in the hen.... get it? It's the unfertilized egg.... and well on the whole plate of salad, there was just one, and Tien kindly and excited gave it to me and told me it's the best and that most of the time they fight over it. I quietly ate it, but later on I admitted to her that it was quite difficult for me to chew and swallow..... I know it's like the soft/hard boiled egg yolk, but just knowing that it's unfertilized and the hen had to be killed in order to get that, it was a little weird for me... hahaha.... and I said, I was sorry to have "wasted" it by not enjoying it, because it was a delicacy to them.
After dinner, we went back to the hotel to rest. I think we were all too tired from all the sun that day. :)
Day 7: Nha Trang
Our last day in Nha Trang.... and for some reason the noodle shop that Tien wanted to go to for breakfast was closed, so we went to another one the served beef noodle soup. It was tasty. But no photos... :P
left: our scuba trip run by Viet Nam Explorer (in glitter... :D)
Then we went out to sea again to go SCUBA DIVING! The diving school that we went with is called Vietnam Explorer and they brought us to an area around Mun Island. As it was Sunday, and school was out, the instructor and his crew brought along their kids. They couldn't scuba dive, but they were all excited to go out for a swim!
We have some photos while we were underwater, but the disc and photos are with Tien in Vietnam, and I haven't gotten a copy yet.... so I'll post them later.
Our instructor brought us to another spot to scuba dive, and he dove down and picked up some shells for his daughter. There are snails living in them and when we placed them on the table and waited, they would slowly ease out...
This is was only a half day trip and we returned to the diving shop for lunch. It was a simple lunch, but we chatted with two German guys who were traveling through Vietnam and thengoing onto Thailand as well. We talked with them about the weirdest thing they've tried so far, and that's where I heard about the elephant ear fish (which I mentioned in day 2: Mekong Delta). They had just arrived in Nha Trang that morning by bus (which is quite a treacherous journey as they had come from HCM City and had to go through lots of narrow mountain roads in the dark.
And as you may know, if you've been on long-haul bus journeys in China or elsewhere in Asia, the bus drivers drive based on experience and drive as it they were being chased by the cops.)
In the afternoon, we had our little nap again in our hotel, and then around 4pm, we went to a nearby temple called Thap Ba Ponagar (Ponagar Temple). I overheard a tour guide telling a foreign tourist a ridiculous story about a watermelon, but I don't recall the exact details.... sorry! It would have been funny to tell it here...
The temple buildings interestingly are built without any type of glue agent, in between the orange bricks there's no cement or anything, but they have lasted all these years. The temple grounds was also a nice place to view the surrounding city.
Afterwards, we went to the Sheraton hotel and to the bar on the top floor, aptly named The Altitude. As the sun was already setting, we enjoyed the nice breeze and view from up high. We stayed there till around 7pm and then went to dinner. SEAFOOD!!!!
left: young coconut, the coconut meat was so young and soft, it was like jelly
Hahaha, as I'm writing this, it seems like all we did was sleep and eat on this trip.... lol....
above & below: view from The Altitude
For dinner we had yummy seafood, and I didn't take any photos as we had pen shells again, shrimp (which were too good and yummy so I couldn't be bothered to stop eating and take a photo), oysters and grilled fish.
That night we left at 10pm back to HCM.
