Na Trang

Early Start for the drive to Na Trang on the coast.
At first we headed down a very good but winding road towards Na Trang on the coast. We figured we had done about ¾ of the journey in little less than 2 hours when we stopped a little roadside cafe for a drink. The views were stunning on the way down, constantly changing landscape of plunging cliffs and rocky outcrops in between the trees bushes and paddy fields down in the valleys. On setting off again we realised why the journey was going to take so long, the road deteriorated to nothing more than dirt as for the next 2 hours or so we slowly bounced along on the longest roadworks I've ever seen. The road was being rebuilt but they just ripped up the old surface and we had to pick our way through the diggers, levelers, piles of rubble and all the other traffic on the 'road'. At some points the driver had to stop and either wait for a digger to stop digging and move out of the way or just stop to try and work out the best route through the works.
Eventually we arrived in Na Trang which I can only describe as Benidorm 30 years ago! This is a resort in the making. If you changed the signage from Vietnamese to Spanish you could easily be forgiven for thinking you were in Spain. We even had a building site next door! Having said that, there were no hoards of drunken 18-30's out and about and it was fairly peaceful out on the beach which was just through the hotel grounds and over a wide promenade and roadway.
Our Evening Meal was a long walk down the front to a restaurant run by an Australian who has installed a Micro-Brewery and produced a number of excellent lagers,including black lager, a pale ale and fruit beers, Heaven... the food wasn't bad either! So after a few scoops we wandered down to the 'Why Not?' Bar for some rather strange cocktails served in a bucket (I stuck to beer) and then suitably fueled some of us headed of to a Karaoke Bar, this was the real deal in in the back of a seedy looking building, climbing the stairs we passed the 'massage' area and ended up in a room the size of a hotel bedroom with bench seats around 3 walls a plasma screen on the wall and a crate of beer and 2 mic's. I can't stand pub Karaoke but because it was just us in the room it was a good laugh, (and the beer probably helped!)
Lie in tomorrow – 9:30am start woo hoo!