To KFC, Or Not To KFC?

I haven't had much sleep, but in the early hours of the morning I awake from a short slumber. The lights of the bus are all on, most people are awake, and I sit up. When I try to talk, nothing comes from my vocal chords. I've completely lost my voice. I try to call for Rachelle, and only a husky, muted sound of air comes out of my mouth. That's when I wake up again: The malaria pills have been playing their usual vivid dream tricks on me. The lights of the bus are still off, a few people are beginning to wake and my voice is intact. 

I notice we are in Nha Trang from some signs. We get to our stop and get off the bus. It's 6:30AM. We have already booked our hotel and just need to find it. In the early morning, the city is already full of life and we ask for directions. It still took a long time to find the hotel because of confusion over street names. When we finally check-in and get to our room, the first thing we do is get some much needed rest. We sleep until midday.

When our eyes open there is one thing on our minds, and that thing is food. Two doors down is a KFC, which is a surprise because it's the first we've seen in Southeast Asia. We are reluctant to go there, because we didn't come here to eat the same food as back home. The awful night on the bus made us feel like we deserved it though, so we did it. Interestingly, the KFC experience was very different to KFC's at home, which made it feel like it was worth going to find out the differences. For example, the food was served out on prison-like, plastic compartment food trays. Once our stomachs had been satisfied, it was time for some sand and sun.

Nha Trang is currently in it's high season for tourism. It's the number one beach spot in Vietnam and the foreigners are scattered around. It isn't overly crowded with them though. The area of town near the coast is full of bars and restaurants with flashing lights and long happy hours to entice you inside. Our hotel is very close to the beach. We walked along it before deciding to hire a sun lounger at Louisiana Beach Restaurant and Bar. it's a place that has its own private stretch of beach, pool and restaurant-bar. Hiring a sun lounger gives you free access to the private beach and pool. The sun is out, meaning I finally even out my front tan to match my back. We order really nice cocktails during the 2-4PM happy hour and I read The Beach to Rachelle. After a few hours, we explore the waters, which are nice enough, and then we go into the pool. We then went back to the sun loungers to relax more of the day away.

In the evening we went out for Rachelle's birthday meal; belated due to the bus trip last night. She's been craving Indian curry for weeks, so we go to a recommended Indian restaurant. The food was amazing: Chicken curry, poppadoms, vegetable samosa, rice, naan bread and a glass of beer, all for the equivalent of four pounds. It sure was tasty. After that, we went for cocktails at Krazy Kim's (a place using some of its profits to raise awareness of child abuse) before going back to bed to finish recovering from the previous night's terrible sleep.