While Calungate Beach and Mui Ne were ‘mini Russia’, Nha Trang is ‘Big Mother Russia’.

Trotsky’s Independent Traders

There are Russian bars big as cars, Russian Tours pour ‘touts jours’, White Russians and sunburnt Red Russians. Sailors and Tailors, beluga restaurants and vodka bars. All that is missing is Lada cars and the Bolshoi Theatre.

Translate This!

Quit Stalin and get in here !

Top Marx for this place!

The nearby International Airport in Cam Ram only serves domestic flights and flights to Russia.

Add to all this is the fact that I was reading Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October at the time (Irony).

A lot of this is probably linked to the fact that up until 2002, The Russian Navy had a large base nearby.

So why is all this interesting? Well for 3 days Karen and I were harassed by street vendors in Russian during our stay here.

We managed to find a guesthouse after an hour and a half of searching the streets and checking out rooms. We would have given up sooner had one of our previous enquiries not kindly allowed us to leave our bags while we searched for accommodation.

We spent the first evening at the beach before heading and finding our bearings before trying to book onward train tickets to Hoi An. In the end we booked flights as the 14 hour bus ride in those awful sleeper buses were not an option. The train was booked out with only the ‘hard’ seats and beds left but with ‘soft’ prices. It appears our tans are not as good as we thought – white skin = VietScam Prices.

This was made up for with the first decent Indian Meal since India. John was so hungry that he forgot to share his naan bread with Karen.

The next day we jumped in a taxi and went to the Thap Ba Mud Baths and Mineral Baths and included in the price was access to all their swimming pools 🙂

Which way?

Someone is excited!

Yes we are ‘sharing’ the bath!

John’s better sides!

Our 1st bath since we left the UK, felt refreshing although in a hot bath of mud in the sun is an interesting experience.

On Nha Trang beach is a small brewery..so we popped in!

At dinner we got chatting to an older English couple who were doing an organised tour. They were full of stories and half drunk on Dalat Wine. As they started talking about Laos Karen kicked me under the table – this is her subtle ‘Take notes John’ cue.

Uh huh uh huh yeah!

With only one full day left there was only one more place to go…