We arrived on Sunday morning. The beach was pretty sweet. Alot more touristy than Mui Ne but it was mostly Vietnamese people and some Chinese people as well, there didn't seem to be too many westerners around. The town was fairly busy but didn't have too much going for it apart from the beach, and the beach is where we spent most of our first couple of days.
Again there isn't alot else interesting to say. We went parasailing which was awesome, but didn't last too long. Got hassled by plenty more people selling things, ate some okay food and drank some great smoothies. We planned to get the bus to Hoi An on Monday evening. Unfortunately the bus was full when we tried to book it so had to settle for a place on Tuesday's bus.
Tuesday morning came and our friend Benson who had been feeling under the weather for a few days was feeling much worse so he headed off to see the doctor in the morning. When he returned the news was not good - he was being tested for Malaria and Dengue fever. We headed back to the hospital with him to get the results.... Dengue fever. At this point he was admitted into the hospital properly and the doctor told us he would most likely have to wait in hospital for three days and then he could leave, but would have to return for a couple of days following to have some follow up tests to make sure he was okay.
At this point we had to cancel our bus for Tuesday and check back into our hotel, and sort out the insurance details. Benson was on a few drips a day and all sorts of medication - in theory recovering is just a case of keeping properly hydrated and resting alot. There are some potentially very bad complications that can arise but thankfully Benson seemed to be in pretty good shape.
This gave us a real dilemma for our travels since we didn't really want to leave our friend in hospital on his own, but similarly we were already behind schedule and would have to start cutting places off the trip if we stayed any longer. If it was just a case of resting up to get better (as it seemed to be) we wouldn't have had too much of a problem leaving if our role was just to keep him occupied! On the other hand if things weren't looking great we didn't really want to leave. We rebooked our bus for the Thursday in the hope that Benson would be well on his way to recovery by that point - if not we would cancel our bus, but we didn't want to be tied down by a full bus again.
Thursday came after a boring couple of days but the doctor wasn't around! For the whole day we were trying to get a hold of him but he was out on some doctor errands (no idea where he was to be honest!). Our bus was due to pick us up at 6pm from our hotel - at 5pm we made the decision to cancel the bus again! We didn't really want to leave without finding out from the doctor he was definitely on the mend.
This was probably a good job since when the doctor did turn up he was far from optimistic and told us that Benson would be here for another five days or so! Apparently his blood platelet levels had fallen and it wasn't looking good. We were sort of at the point of no return as far as the rest of our trip was concerned so we moved our flights backwards by a week. For various reasons we really didn't want to do that but i suppose some things are more important. All things considered it was for the best and it was nice to not have to worry about our time for the next few days at least.
After 7 days altogether Benson was told he could leave the hospital on the Tuesday, and we managed to finally get on the bus and leave Nha Trang, 8 days later than planned. Benson had to stay a couple of days but thankfully was all okay in the end and caught up with us a couple of days later in Hoi An - we're roughly back on plan but a week behind and still all together.
To be honest Nha Trang has been by far the low point of the trip because of the above. It was quite a shitty place to be caught for a week, hotels were expensive and not that comfortable. By the end of our time we were resenting the fact that we were having to eat out since we couldn't find anything that was particularly great and cheap. I think more than ever we all missed home and got extremely tired. So much for a 4 month holiday, travelling can get stressful! Thankfully the hospital had a decent TV and I could plug my ipod in - so we watched about 3 seasons of The Sopranos - I think we owe HBO for keeping us sane!
We were all resolved to try to get on with our travels and make the most of what was left but it was hard not to feel a bit deflated as if some of the wind had been taken out of our sails. Thankfully we sooned snapped out of that once we reached our next stop, Hoi An. For both myself and Maddy I think it was probably our favourite place so far.
At least we always have good music!
After 7 days altogether Benson was told he could leave the hospital on the Tuesday, and we managed to finally get on the bus and leave Nha Trang, 8 days later than planned. Benson had to stay a couple of days but thankfully was all okay in the end and caught up with us a couple of days later in Hoi An - we're roughly back on plan but a week behind and still all together.
To be honest Nha Trang has been by far the low point of the trip because of the above. It was quite a shitty place to be caught for a week, hotels were expensive and not that comfortable. By the end of our time we were resenting the fact that we were having to eat out since we couldn't find anything that was particularly great and cheap. I think more than ever we all missed home and got extremely tired. So much for a 4 month holiday, travelling can get stressful! Thankfully the hospital had a decent TV and I could plug my ipod in - so we watched about 3 seasons of The Sopranos - I think we owe HBO for keeping us sane!
We were all resolved to try to get on with our travels and make the most of what was left but it was hard not to feel a bit deflated as if some of the wind had been taken out of our sails. Thankfully we sooned snapped out of that once we reached our next stop, Hoi An. For both myself and Maddy I think it was probably our favourite place so far.
At least we always have good music!
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