kobecat

Hi Fran, that actually was a great help. We will go with the company you went with!

Thanks again for everything.

Beryl

Beryl: Hopefully someone else will answer you about finding local transportation. The tender leaves you off very close to some shops and the Oceanographic Museum. There are vendors there selling postcards, hats, etc., as well as vendors right at the dock selling most everything. However, I'm not sure about taxis. Lack of English might be a big problem unless you had a map of places and you could perhaps point to where you want to go to. If you want to see anything of Nha Trang, you really need some sort of transportation as many of the sites are some distance from the port. Also, the city of Nha Trang is rather spread out, as far as I could tell from the van ride. I never explored local transportation because we knew we were going to do a tour. Sorry but I'm not going to be a lot of help on this one...Fran

April 20, 2009: We had booked a tour for 8 of us that was really fun and interesting. This is a tender port but we had no problems getting tender tickets for the first tender. The tender ride takes only about 10 to 15 minutes. Once you get off the tender (and yes, there are many vendors right at the dock), you walk a short distance to the Oceanographic Museum to meet the guide. It was difficult to understand our guide’s English, but the tour itself was terrific. We had a short tour of the Oceanographic Museum and then boarded our van for a ride through Nha Trang. The beaches and manicured trees are really nice. We boarded a riverboat for our trip down the Cai River, with views of houses on stilts, fishing boats, rice paddies, rickety bridges, before stopping at “coconut island”. The family here chopped off the tops of fresh coconuts and we had coconut milk. Then back on the little boat to visit a family house and have tea and fruit. We also visited a house where they were doing rush mat weaving. You could try your hand at the weaving (but don’t quit your day job). We then visited an orphanage where the children sang a song for us and we handed out candy. I had packed 300 lollipops in my suitcase for this. Priceless pictures of the children! After all that it was time for lunch at a seaside restaurant—included spring rolls, cucumber soup, squid with vegetables, mackeral in tomato sauce, rice, and fresh bananas. Not quite finished with the tour yet! On to the most amazing embroidery workshop/store—here is definitely the place to buy first-class souvenir picture if you need something for your house. Some smaller pictures were $120 to $180 and larger and more complicated pictures were much more. These embroidered pictures of flowers, Vietnam life, or people looked like paintings and were very intricate.

 

We also visited the PoNagar Temple (about 100 steps up to the temple), with wonderful views of the harbor and fishing boats below. Final stops at the Dam Market for souvenirs and the beach to walk in the sand and take pictures.

 

For photos of our trip, I posted a link to our photo web site on the Cruise Blog thread.

 

Highlights: The entire tour

Lowlights: The guide’s English, although this did not spoil the tour, and I applaud anyone who attempts to learn the English language

Is Nha Trang the sort of place you can just get off the ship and find a local guide who could take you around? Taxi?? I appreciate that a lack of English may be a problem.

How far is the town itself from where the cruise ship docks?

Thanks for your help - you have been fantastic.

Beryl

There is a 240V outlet under the bed - it has the bedlamp plugged into it. It is however still a US outlet so you need the adaptor BUT you can use it for your own dryer, curler, straightener or whatever.