Quy Nhon Night

Chips for breakfast! We were surprised to see this delicacy on the breakfast buffet, along with the seafood fried rice, mushroom soup and all manner of Russian dishes, as the hotel in Nha Trang was full Russians.

We drove along Highway 1 - the coast road that goes right up to Hanoi - and passed loads of interesting sights - so frustrating when you are travelling. We could ask to stop for photos, but we'd never get anywhere and the one time we did ask to stop I almost got decapitated by something suspiciously like an axle across the lap of a scooter driver. Anything and everything is carried on scooters, it is amazing to see how the drivers keep their balance. Wearing safety helmets is compulsory but it is a bit disconcerting to see a family of four on one scooter, with the two small children wearing no protection at all. Only once have we seen a child wearing a helmet.

Through the mainly agricultural areas, coconuts, fish farms, rice fields, all at different stages of maturity and often with water buffalo and lots of egrets picking around. The houses here, if you can call them that, are tiny, often made of tin and look no more than shacks, with bare earth and often lots of 'rubbish' around. Every piece of material is put to work, nothing is wasted, but the whole effect is one of poor people eeking out an existence from the land, or from running a tiny shop from the front of their house.

Through the towns things improve, to the level that you suddenly see a wedding dress shop wedged in between a café and some other retail outlet - and all the dresses are western, sparkly and frilly - exactly like the one worn by the bride at tonight's hotel - we arrived just as the line up was taking place and were amused that the groom was on his mobile and the bride was scowling at him...

The going was slow as the road is in an atrocious condition. At one point there appeared to be neat square and oblong holes in the road - obviously waiting to be filled - that Lola described as 'decorative holes'!

We made an unscheduled stop at another Cham tower, and spent a happy hour snapping the tower, the Buddha and some small wildlife - a 4 inch long millipede, an interesting looking fly, a small lizard on the wall of the tower, some beautiful frangipani flowers and a plant I had never come across before - Lola called in the shy plant, as when you touch a leaf it closes up, opening again a minute or so later. It is a 'mimosa pudica' according to Wikipedia and is now a pantropical weed. I like it. There's also hundreds of huge dragonflies here but too fast for me!

Lunch was fried rice and vegetables, but we could have chosen from ostrich, dove, forgs (frogs!), eels and all sorts of weird and wonderful things. Not dog, thankfully, though they do eat dog here and while I was dozing in the minibus Frances saw a whole truck of dogs go by....

5pm arrival at the Seagull Hotel in Quy Nhon, really just a stopover. On the sixth floor of 12, just had time for a walk along the beach before dark - virtually no dusk here so dark by 6. The hotel is a modern block with a swimming pool, only yards from the beach and very comfortable. Showered and refreshed, we headed up to the Panorama bar on the roof, to enjoy very expensive cashew nuts, peanuts, a mini-steak sandwich (Frances) a small pizza (me) and two glasses of Dalat wine which cost almost $20 by the time 10% vat and 5% service were added to the prices!! But at least the view was pretty good and gave me the chance to play with long shutter speeds - I am chuffed with this shot as it is my first trailing lights photo - 8 seconds with the gorillapod wrapped round the guard rail!

To Hoi An tomorrow - so looking forward to it, with more Cham towers on the way