The Jungle Books by Matt O'Kipling (who does make exceedingly good cakes)!

Wayhey we finally made it to a beach!

After the chilly climes of Dalat our arrival at the beaches of Nha Trang was a welcome change indeed i can tell you! We couldn't wait to get ourselves into the water, so we booked ourselves onto an island boat trip, which turned out to be not entirely what we expected...

First off, aside from our two new Aussie compadres (Mitch and Tom) we were the only people on board who were not Vietnamese, so for the majority of the trip we didn't really understand what was going on. Never mind we decided to make the best of it with a spot of snorkeling.

There was some pretty spectacular coral and a suspected Nemo sighting! Then we headed back to the boat for a spot of lunch.

Om Nom Om Nom!

Then came the ritualistic humiliation

Being slow danced to Unchained Melody and crooned to with a song of the tour guides own making called 'No Money, No Honey' was less than fun. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it though, humph!

The lead singer of the boat band bragged that he could sing a song for every country in the world. He had English and Scottish and Irish, but no Welsh! We decided that this couldn't continue so we taught him Sospan Fach to sing to any other Welshies who happened aboard his vessel :)

After the band finished we were treated to the sight of a half naked Vietnamese man standing on a raft in the sea doing a very sexy dance...

We jumped off the boat and joined him, where he plied us with free (and disgusting) red wine, which was more than a little diluted with salt water. Ych a fi!

After a brief visit to an aquarium, we headed back to shore and went out drinking with our new friends at the sailing club. We woke up in the morning with very sore heads and ate a lot of M&Ms to fix us.

All this was enough to convince us that we had earned some R&R at a nearby beach paradise, so we set out on our journey north to Jungle Beach!

Jungle Beach is a kind of homestay place 60Km north of Nha Trang. It's run by this crazy French Canadian man named Sylvio and his family. Everyone stays in private little bamboo huts on the beach amidst his jungle like garden and everyone eats together, so we met lots of different people.Every afternoon a lady would bring us a plate of fresh fruit on the beach. Ah luxury! Night swimming was brilliant, because you could see all the glowing phosphorescent plankton in the water.

One morning at five am, Sylvio woke us all to show us the amazing sunrise over the sea.

One afternoon, when the playing in the sea and relaxing on the beach just got too much, we headed up the mountain in search of a fabled waterfall which lay there.

It was a hearty scrabble up some rocks accompanied by Sylvio's dog Ugly.

We stayed here for 5 days, celebrating Matt's birthday with a bottle of red wine (courtesy of Syl) and we didn't want to leave! But Hoi An was beckoning...