A small Russia in the middle of Vietnam

[by Jonas] Another (and probably for now the last) night drive later, we stood between the high-rise buildings of Nha Trang at 4:45 in the morning. More than an hour too early and still half asleep. Thanks to Google Maps, we quickly knew exactly where we were and made our way to our hotel. When we started, there was hardly any traffic on the streets, but when the clock struck 5 o'clock, you could see the city slowly waking up. Due to the lack of street lighting, it was not that easy to find the right way and to make sure not to step into anything. When we arrived at the hotel, we had to realize that it was still not awake. Even the security guard was snoring on a couch next to the entrance door. So we decided to go to the beach to kill some time. Additionally, we had hoped to see the sun rise over the sea. But unfortunately, that didn't work out because it was still very cloudy and foggy at the beginning. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the sight of the open sea and watched as the beach also woke up little by little. Other tourists took photos on the almost empty beach and occasionally a runner passed by.

Then the time had come and we could finally check in. On the way, the city had finally awakened and the everyday chaos on the Vietnamese streets had returned. Especially on this way to the hotel, we realized that you could also call this city a "hotel city". One hotel followed the next, one higher than the other. In addition, there were huge construction sites on every corner, where more hotels in high-rise forms were probably being built. We also realized here what we had read occasionally on the Internet: the city was dominated by Russian tourists. Everything was labeled in Cyrillic letters and even we were spoken to in Russian on the street. But when we arrived at our hotel, we fell into a deep afternoon nap first.

When we woke up again, it was already afternoon and in order to have done something on this day at all, we went back to the only attraction in the city: the beach. We looked for a reasonably quiet but sunny spot, which was not a matter of course. The many high hotels in the city were built so close and high on the beach that they covered the sun in many places in the afternoon. Russian influences continued on the beach as well. Not only could you only hear Russian around you, but also women and men came by again and again, who held flyers with Russian inscriptions for various beach parties in your face. In addition, a few local women walked up and down the beach and also advertised their products loudly in Russian, which they carried with them. These ranged from cheap sunglasses to freshly cooked corn.

It was very windy and therefore very wavy, so I played around in the water a bit before we made our way back to the hotel, as it was already time for dinner. So we set off with the goal of finding good but cheap food somewhere. We noticed that all the restaurants also designed their menus in four languages. In addition to the standard English and Vietnamese, Chinese and of course Russian were added.

We had to realize that the city was a bit more expensive than we were used to. In the end, however, we decided on a small restaurant whose menu appealed to us the most. So we went inside. But just before we wanted to place our order, there was a frightening bang, the music stopped and the lights went out. But not only in our small restaurant. A look at the street showed that the whole city was suddenly without electricity. Gradually, the lights came on again at the big hotels, as they apparently had emergency generators. But our restaurant remained dark and the staff stopped serving. After waiting for a while and nothing happened, we decided to look for something else as we were slowly getting really hungry. But many other places also had no power, so we each got a sandwich with chicken from a sandwich stand and made our way to the hotel room with it. When we saw our hotel, we saw that it was also one of the hotels that had no power, so we had to climb all 7 floors on foot to reach our pitch-black room. Here we ate the sandwiches and drank a beer that we had bought in the supermarket before (12,000 Dong = €0.43 per bottle).

In the internet we found out that there should also be a very good doner kebab here and since we hadn't had one in ages and were quite hungry, we made our way there. It wasn't far and when we arrived at the restaurant, we realized that it too seemed to be one of the city's attractions. Although it wasn't particularly big, it was packed. The kebab (60,000 Dong = €2.14 per kebab) was really delicious and something different again.

We spent the rest of the day in our resort's pool and on the beach, just enjoying the holiday, before our bus left for Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in the afternoon of the next day. Finally, this was a normal bus with normal seats and it left on time.

You will find our first impressions of Vietnam's largest city in the next blog, so stay tuned!

Until then

Franzi and Jonas