Joining tours isn’t my favorite thing to do, but sometimes I need to admit that I have no other choice but to join one if I wanna spare some money. Visiting several islands on my own wouldn’t be possible anyway, so as I have a spare day, I did the 4 islands Nha Trang island tour, with Funky Monkey. This was the cheapest tour I found but beware that prices might vary from tour agent to tour agent. I ended up paying more than I was supposed to… The fair price is 350K dong.
But, I had this extra day in Nha Trang and wasn’t feeling like laying at the beach full day cause I had already visited other things around like the major attractions, Hon Noi and Diep Son. I joined this Nha Trang island tour and I have spent all day from island to island. The pick-up time is at 8.30 am and we return to land at about 5 pm.
Tri Nguyen Aquarium
Our first stop during this Nha Trang island tour is the Tri Nguyen Aquarium. There is an entrance fee of 170K to go inside. I didn’t visit as I thought it was not worth the visit. Other people stayed outside too. The thing is that there is nothing to do around while waiting for people to come back. So, this first stop was very boring and I was already regretting lining up for this tour.
Mot island
The second stop is Mot island. Here you have the option to go on a sea walker tour where you dress in some kind of underwater astronaut suite and the rest I don’t know cause I didn’t join this tour. It was very expensive! Only three people did it. My tour group was basically Vietnamese, a dutch-Vietnamese family, and a small group of Malaysian youngsters. I didn’t meet or talked to anyone which made this trip even more boring. Usually, this kind of trip is cool to meet other foreigners, but this wasn’t the case. While those three people joined the sea walker tour, the rest of us went to a nearby snorkeling spot. Now, finally something worthy! Here I was able to snorkel around as the tour includes snorkeling gear. I love snorkeling and this was a good spot. I could spend hours at sea watching the fishies but we didn’t stay here very long.
Lunchtime- Coral Island
After Mot island, we went to Coral island just to have lunch. The lunch was in the boat that turned its benches into a giant table and we all had lunch together. We didn’t step out of the boat during lunchtime, but I can state that this was the funnier part of this Nha Trang island tour. The guides were funny and amusing. They made us have a great time with their performances and dancing challenges. It was really fun and everybody was laughing and enjoying it. After eating we had a “cocktail” moment in the water. Everybody jumped into the water and was drinking just there to the sound of loud music that incited some underwater dance. This was the highlight of the tour to me: the lunch break, and was the thing that made me not so frustrated by joining this Nha Trang island tour. I’m sure this is fun in a group, but this is not the best activity for a solo traveler, I would say.
Tranh Mini beach
After the lunch break, we headed to the last stop: Tranh Mini beach. To my surprise, we needed to pay an entrance fee to access the beach… the beach is super crowded. There are a lot of screams, laughs, yells at this beach. People seem to have never touched the sea ever… those Vietnamese were so euphoric with this beach that it was very funny to sit and watch them. There were some water sports I could do, but I preferred to watch. I regret not doing the parasailing. It seemed a lot of fun. I would have done it if I weren’t alone… Do you also feel like sometimes you don’t do certain things because you are alone?
I also enjoyed very much watching the others fall over and over again while trying to step on this kind of board that is water controlled and is a lot of fun to watch inexperienced people trying to get up on their feet with that gear on.
Therefore, I actually enjoyed this last stop. I had lots of laughs at others’ misery haha. It was fun to be there and watch how people from a very different culture behave. After this, supposedly relaxing break, we headed to land. The Nhat Trang island tour finished at about 5 pm.
The rest of the day I walked on the streets and understood a bit better why foreigners say Nha Trang is a “shit hole”.
Yes, there are many Russians in Nha Trang, as well as Chinese. In fact, the place feels taken by the Russians and Chinese too, and many Vietnamese complain about that. That’s why foreigners say Nha Trang doesn’t feel like Vietnam anymore. Well, but if you dare to step out of the city center you will see normal Vietnam. Just avoid the places where everyone else is going. If you keep in the center be prepared to overpay pretty much everything. I bought the most expensive water bottle ever from a woman that managed to fool me by pretending that I didn’t understand her very well. I also paid a lot of money for the worst Banh Mi ever. The bread was so hard that I couldn’t bite it. I argued with the lady but she pretended she didn’t understand… I never felt so much like a stupid foreigner like I felt on the most touristy streets of Nha Trang. This is why I prefer less touristy places.
