Nha Tang Vietnam - 9th March

Nha Tang - Vietnam

We have just completed our first train journey in Vietnam.
The fun started the minute we entered the taxi for the train station in Saigon.
I have already mentioned that everyone here has a moped, and that cars are not that common. Well theres a reason for that.
Cars take six time longer to navigate through hundreds of mopeds all weaving in and out of the on coming traffic.
The journey was not chaotic, just a slow crawl to the point that the taxi was nearly stalling for most of the journey.

Once we finally arrived at the station, we found very little problem in finding the correct train and carriage. It would seem that all those that come into contact with foreign visitor and are employed all speak reasonable English.

The train itself was quite old, and it had the smallest passageways that I have ever seen. We only just managed to get our luggage through and into our carriage.
The good thing was that it was clean, which was a comforting bonus as we had booked an overnight spleeper.

We has booked into a 4 person sleeper, on the off chance that the other beds would be free. We nearly struck lucky, as we only had to share with one other person.
Unfortunately for us though he was rather old and contained a large volume of gas, which he then let lose in stages throughout the train journey. Alison informs me that it never woke her up, but I think that she was just being polite (or that she's accustomed to it) as it was loud enough to be heard from 3 carriages down!!!

We arrived in Nha Tang at 5am in the morning, and expected to be picked up by our hotel.
We should have guessed that this offer was too good to be true, and spent over half an hour fending off hundreds of rival taxi drivers who were trying to make out that they were there to pick us up.
In the end we gave up waiting and sat at a roadside cafe ( I cant think of another word to describe 4 plastic chairs and a table), and relaxed with a cold drink.
By the time we were ready to leave, the station had calmed down which enabled us to approach a taxi for the lift after we had beat him down on his price!!
We arrived at our hotel feeling quite guilty, as his meter was actually showing a little more than we had agreed - Result !!!We are now in Nha Tang which a sea side resort with all the trappings.
You walk from one shop to another and are instantly approached with cards and leaflets to entice you in.
That said, its actually quite nice.
We have already found some good bars and a couple of places that we will be checking out later for food.

We have planned to be here for a couple of nights, but that may change if we settle in.
We have already found a accommodation for $5 a night !!
We have booked to go diving in the morning, so expect some more photos of Nemo.