It’s our last full day in Nha Trang, and it starts early! At 7am, the speakers downstairs are turned on, and the karaoke starts at 8am. The sound echoes all the way in between the buildings. Téa takes her time eating her breakfast, so Joe and Maylin have time to go downstairs to check things out.
When they come back up, it’s time for Norwegian school. I start with Maylin while Téa does her French, and by the time Maylin and I reach the Norwegian finish line, Téa has managed to complete her entire daily workload. We put Maylin’s French on hold, and head out.
After all, it’s our last day by the ocean! Joe and the girls want a steamed bun before hitting the waves, and I get a slice of pizza. It’s an enormous slice of pizza, and the oil from the cheese is all over both hands. Nobody thought to stop and take a picture…
As soon as we finish our lunch, the girls start: “When do we get to into the waves?” “Are you coming soon?” “Are you coming now?” I capitulate first, and hang out in the waves with the girls, and Joe joins us not long thereafter. We spend a loooong time in the water today, knowing it’s our last day. Each wave gets a squeal, and it’s good to see how confidently they now swim, even in ocean waves.
I get out first, and after a month by the beach, I actually lie down on the towel. It’s so relaxing, and I would totally fall asleep here, just warm, in the sun, for 10 minutes by myself… Luckily I have Joe and the girls, they never let me relax for long, so no danger of actually falling asleep and actually getting burned. Phew!
Joe and Téa head upstairs first to shower off, and Maylin and I hang out on the beach. We try to give away our sand toys to a little girl playing with her dad, but he tells us they already bought some. We rinse our feet off and head upstairs.
Once we’re all clean and dressed, we do some blogging, working and light packing. We do have all day tomorrow, after all. On our way out to dinner, we check out the view from our hallway window, and I realize we could have watched yesterday’s fireworks and this morning’s karaoke from this window.
It’s party day downstairs. They are recreating an old fashioned Tet (Vietnamese Lunar New Year) celebration, and the vendors are out in force today. I still don’t know what the money bank pigs symbolize, or the hats, but they appear and disappear daily at this point.
Joe approaches the dessert vendor, and she loads up a plate of treats for him. He’s got squishy sweets, a donut, some nutty brittle crackers, a mandarin orange and more. He shares, and we all get to taste the Tet treats.
We took a taxi downtown for a garden restaurant dinner! The venue was really nice, with plants (both real and fake) adoring walls and staircases. Beautiful bright murals made it seem so cheerful, I much prefer this to dark “modern art”.
We ordered a Bun Cha, a tray of three different meats, rice noodles, lettuce and herbs. The girls ordered fresh rolls, and shared some of our platter. Joe and I looked at the three lettuce leaves and all the food on our platter, thinking – how will we roll all of this in three lettuce leaves? We asked a waitress for more lettuce, and she said “this is not supposed to be rolls” and then proceeded to cut up all our lettuce and noodles with a pair of scissors, and told us to mix everything in our bowls. We laughed and wondered why none of the staff had told us when we rolled our first attempts… And then she plonked a plate of 10 lettuce leaves on the table. What?? Are we rolling again?
Outside is dark already, and we have decided to go to a dessert place 15 minutes away. But first, I am mesmerized by the spa across the street, and the spa next door to it: They have both created a green facade with enormous plants!
Joe guides us to a dessert place through busy Nha Trang Friday night traffic, and the first thing the girls see when they go to sit down are these fantastic pillows/stuffies:
This particular dessert place is Thai, and so the girls want mango sticky rice. It looks so promising, even though the rice is blue.
After dessert, I realize we are super close to the chocolate store I had marked in my maps before coming here, and we haven’t visited it yet. We walk another 10 minutes or so, and find this chocolate factory/store. It smells like cocoa beans, as there’s a roaster working in one corner, and a chocolate churner pumping out liquid gold in another. There are samples to be had, and chocolate art to admire. We buy some macarons and head home.
When the taxi drops us off back at home, Joe says “do you want pizza”, and I am so full that at first I don’t understand. But then it clicks, there’s a vendor at the corner who cracks quail eggs on a rice paper disk, and it’s called Vietnamese pizza. We’ve been wanting to try this, but haven’t found it at the right time. We have to try it, hungry or not!
The party is winding down. The organizers are trying to clear the tables, and all around the event there are tables full of diners still singing and chanting and drinking. It’s loud, and it looks like it must have been fun, at least for the ones who are still partying!
Once back upstairs, I set out our macarons:
That’s a warp on our last full day in Nha Trang. Tomorrow’s plans are packing, maybe eating lunch, packing some more and heading to the train station. Next stop Da Nang!