Busy doing nothing

Leaving Hoi An behind, we took a taxi to Da Nang train station where we would take another night train to Nha Trang. Da Nang looked a bit like hell to us. It is a big city by the sea dominated by enormous five star hotels blocking the access to the beach. Marriot, Intercom, Four Seasons, Hilton and all the other names that remind us of Qatar that we love to hate. The night train was older than the previous one and we shared our cabin with a retired British couple. They were nice and talkative, but were a bit worried with the potential damage that an overexcited child could inflict on their sleep. However, as soon as they woke up at 6am (3 hours before our arrival time), they didn't refrain from opening the curtains which woke us all up. Entitled and selfish old buggers.
Like Da Nang, Nha Trang is a very big city by the beach with chaotic traffic and enormous beach front apartment blocks catering for Russians and Chinese (many restaurants and travel agencies were fully written in these languages). It has a long beach side promenade

where the local elderly hang out and exercise and an extremely busy two lane road beside it, that made it feel like an adventure every time we had to cross it to access the beach. The beach itself is wide and was never crowded due to the low season but was also quite dirty, both the sand and the water. The best thing about this part of our journey was our apartment. None of the 40 story beach front buildings are pretty to look at, but our 24th floor apartment did offer a phenomenal view from the balcony where Pedro spent most of his time watching the local kids play football on the beach after school.
Almost three months into our trip, we felt no need to be "active daily tourists" and ended up spending

more time indoors reading, listening to music, practicing yoga, investing in Flora's schooling during the day and in catching up on the brilliant Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War at night. In the end, we enjoyed our stay in Nha Trang but it has to go down as the least exciting chapter of our trip so far.