Diving and so on

After the previous day's extraordinary drinking, waking up early next morning for diving was hell. Haakon's head was pounding and Mahta & Halvor were both super tired.. Apparently snake was supposed to turn you into Superman, but let me tell you, I did not feel like Superman, more like a rotten sac of shit. Oh well.

We arrived at the boat at 8.30 in the morning, and by 9 o'clock we were on our way to the dive site. Our divemasters were an ancient Russian guy and a tiny French/Vietnamese fellow. They both proved to be pretty good, but unfortunately the diving wasn't. Due to a strong current, the visibility was reduced and we were constantly pushed into the coral reefs. Our second dive was better, but all in all, the diving was shit compared to our experience in Thailand and Halvor didn't think much of the snorkelling... Guess that's the way it works out sometimes.

By this time, we had grown tired of Nha Trang, so we went to book a bus ticket to Hoi An. By the time we reached the office, it was already 6.00 PM, and we were really worried that they wouldn't have any tickets left. The relief was great when we found out we had scored the last three tickets on the bus!!! Kick ass.

The evening and next afternoon were really not too exciting, so I won't bore you with details, but we spent the day sun tanning on the beach and the next evening eating delicious seafood... MMMmmmmm.

As I just told you, we scored the last three tickets for the 12 hour overnight bus ride to Hoi An, which we thought was awesome... WRONG.. We got stuck in the very back of the bus, which on a normal bus wouldn't be THAT bad, but on a Vietnamese bus is horrible. Imagine this: It's 34 degrees and 80 percent humidity outside. The bus is absolutely packed (in fact there is one guy sitting on a plastic chair in the aisle). The airconditioning doesn't really produce any cold air. Mahta, Halvor and Haakon are sitting in the back seats with absolutely no room for shoulders or (long) legs. THE ENGINE IS RIGHT UNDERNEATH OUR ASSES, PRODUCING ENOUGH HEAT TO FRY AN EGG ON THE FLOOR... Seriously, it was too hot to keep your bare feet on the ground... WOW. By the time we arrived Hoi An at six in the morning, it looked as if we had just walked out of the shower.. We were all soaked and stunk really badly.

Our time in Hoi An was not really exciting. We spent 4 nights in this cute town relaxing, sun tanning and chilling by a pool. We rented some crappy bicycles (which could hardly support Haakon's weight, think of the struggle when Mahta and Haakon shared a bike) to take to the beach some 5Km outside of town... it was all worth it when we arrived at a beautiful, and clean beach with a gorgeous view of some islands. We opted out of the trip to the beach the next day, so we all decided to splurge and use the swimming pool at a nice hotel. Probably one of our worst investments so far seeing that we were rained on only after an hour! We finally came to the inevitable moment of saying our goodbyes to Halvor, he decided to spend a few days tailoring suits in Bangkok over spending the time with us... do you feel the love?
We left for a dreaded 17 hour long bus ride to Hanoi the same afternoon, but luckily the lack of engine heat help ease the pain.

That leaves us about one week behind current date. What happened this past week??? I'll give you all a hint.. Motorbiking on old Russian Minsks in Northeastern Vietnam. We'll update soon..

Until next time...