Day Twelve; Nha Trang to Hoi An

Still in our lovely hotel in Nha Trang, after a small lie in and breakfast I headed off to a local market with some of the guys. The outside was mostly set aside for locals with fish, meat, rusty drills, fruit, coal and other such on sale. Inside was the tourist tat; where I suddenly became obsessed with the ornate chopsticks on offer and ended up spending a ridiculous amount on them; dragging Claire down with me by persuading her she also needed them in her life and we could haggle for a better price if we bought two sets!
We took the looongest walk back ever in order to take in the backstreets, and then headed to a spa for a mud bath! (One advantage in this was that the taxi ride there also gave those of us too lazy to go exploring on foot at 6am the morning before (ekhem) a chance to see some of the sights of Nha Trang). Anyway, the mud bath was equivocal to sitting in milkshake (or so I’d imagine), but very enjoyable.

When we came back we had a cheap local meal, saw the night market and then headed off for another over night train to Hoi An.

We were warned this train was not so nice...well, I'll be honest; it wasn’t. The room was crawling with cockroaches which were so plentiful we eventually gave up on making a fuss and killing them as they appeared, and resorted to wrapping clothing around our heads and ignoring them. In other cabins there were mice running about under the beds, and the beds themselves were dressed in dirty sheets (sleeping sacks recommended). However, we realised three things. One was that we had the nicest section of the train, and in some of the other carriages people were sleeping on wooden slats on the floor whilst we had beds. Second, this was according to an American Lady we met outside a huge improvement to the service as it was a few years back. She was delighted with how clean it was, and how good the beds were; so I can only assume what it might have been like before. And thirdly, beer makes all things better.
It wasn't the end of the world by any means, but not for the faint hearted or hygiene obsessed either!

Night everyone!