Moar diving plz!

Last night we wanted to see a movie so we hunted down a theater, but it didn't have anything running that looked good, so we walked to a 3d cafe and we were pleasantly surprised.

They were showing Captain America in 3d on a projector, we wore glasses and it worked great! It was just a fabric screen in a room with soft seats. They let us bring in our beer and snacks, and it only cost $2 per person.

Today everybody was on the dive boat, Ryan and I did two dives, Leah did a fun-dive and snorkled with Holly in the afternoon. We saw lots of scorpion fish, only a few nudibranches, and some tiny little box fish. Of course there was tons of corals, star fish, sea urchins and other stuff.

So now we're nearly done our afternoon rest (during the hottest part of the day) and it got really stormy so that was good timing!

It sounds like the storm is all done so we'll head out again soon.

Nha Trang is for diving

So we took the evening train from Hoi An to Nha Trang. We asked for (and paid for) soft seats with air conditioning, but when we collected our tickets three were entirely in Vietnamese, and one said soft seat air con, and that one ticket was in a different car. We were a little nervous until I translated one of the phrases into "air conditioning".

That said, trains are great but sitting in a chair for 8+ hours is no fun. We napped, sat in the dining car for a while but the general concensus was that a sleeper would have been worth the extra money even though we weren't on the train overnight.

We got into Nha Trang an hour and a half late (at midnight) so I went right to sleep and woke up for a 7am scuba trip.

Nobody else was so motivated so I was the only one of our group, and as it turns out I was the only tourist recreational diver on the boat too. There were about 10 instructors in training though so I just chatted them up.

The diving was great, I saw a bunch of nudibranches, pipe fish, vertical swimming coral fish, various types of scorpion fish including a white fin scorpion fish. BTW do not touch the scorpion fish or you'll have a bad time. Not as many star fish but still lots of clown fish.

So now we're chilling on the beach, Leah is sleeping on a mat beside me and Ryan and Holly have gone off for lunch.

Leaving Hoi An

Scuba was great, Ryan and I did two dives and Leah did two fun dives.

I saw loads of starfish, mostly puffy blue ones but there were a couple big ones too: one had blue markings and the other had about ten legs and each leg had little squirmy tentacles on top, not to mention the little ones for grabbing on the bottom.

There were lion fish, box fish, yellow piper fish, little clown fish in little anemones, and big clown fish in big anemones.  I saw one huge lobster, I only noticed him from his huge antenna poking out from under a rock.
I only saw two little nudibranches, but maybe we'll see more next time.

The boat took about an hour to get out there, and our dive master took Ryan, me and a third guy (Lars) under before everyone else, and we we're last out of the water for both dives too.  It was good times.

We had a delicious Indian dinner last night, and today was a superbly lazy day at the beach. We've got a train booked from Danang to Nha Trang for tomorrow afternoon, and hopefully we'll do more scuba there too!

I'm going for a ride...

I'm going riding on a bus!

We rode the hot bus from Hue to Hoi An; $4 for 4 hours of bumpy road and barely working AC.

Around 1pm we arrived in Hoi An and were immediately overwhelmed with touts trying to get us to go to their hotel. Strangely one held a sign that said "Mr Ryan Klann" and another said" Mr Paul W". Surprised? We were, but I guess our non-committal response to a hotel recommendation from the last hotel was taken as a reservation. Oops!

We politely told them no and hired a cab for the hotel we wanted. But $25 for a room for one night? Scandalous, so we went across the street for $12. It is a nice place too!

After lunch we rented two scooters and made scuba reservations for tomorrow, had lunch and I picked up some beer for tonight around the pool.

Tomorrow we go scuba. Ryan and I are both certified divers so we will do two dives, Leah will do a fun dive (less than 10m) and Holly will snorkel as she can't do scuba. It's going to be fun!