23.02 Day 39 Nha Trang
Friday 23rd February - Nha Trang (Day 39)
Like our last place Mui Ne, there are plenty of Russians in town, once again menus in English. And Russian and shop names too. Unlike Mui Ne, the sleepy fishing village, Nha Trang more resembles the Gold Coast, Australia. I’ve already even seen a hotel called simply Gold Coast. Along the vast swathes of beach pounded by the ocean is this town dotted with high rise buildings right up to the seafront.
After waking early I walk the two blocks to the beach and at 6am there are hundreds of people in the sea and thousands more on the beach. Whilst there are tourists mixed in, it appears to be dominated by locals who then retreat back to the buildings as the sun rises, immediately exuding heat. There’s a circle of 50+ year olds doing (very good) keepie-uppies, there’s Tai Chi at the back of the beach, and more vigorous dance classes too. Every person is older than me.
Collecting mangoes and bananas from a street seller for breakfast back in the room, before Seb and I head to the pool and the girls go out for more substance in the form of an oversized waffle.
All in the pool we can see a huge ferris wheel on an island just off the mainland. Some googling turns up VinWonders, a theme park / hotel / aquarium / water park across the water. Access is via a long cable car and so we buy tickets for a trip there that evening to also watch ‘The Tata Show’.
The day is spent in and out of the pool as well as school work in the room. We’d reserved 2 nights to be able to see this place first and extended another 2 nights, cutting out the middleman of Booking / Agoda / Hotels / Expedia (take your pick), so the price is just 620k vnd ($38) per night.
Our VinWonder tickets seem to indicate we can only access the cable car from 6:30pm for the 7:30pm show on the island, so with the intent to get dinner before we get on the cable car, we taxi to the cable car station around 5pm only to discover there is nothing here except a giant ticketing hall. We’re not the only people going; there’s hundreds if not thousands waiting to cross.
We join the long, but thankfully fast moving queue - though it’s much too slow for Seb who wants to go back home - and ‘who wants to see a show anyway?’ - and soon enough we are boarding the cable car, just the 4 of us in a 8-10 seater car. There’s a claim it's the longest in the world at 3.3km - I think the hidden asterix is possibly the longest over the sea.
With a booming and rumbling familiar to skiers it suddenly speeds up and spits you out the building, immediately over the sea, rising up and across the 6 pylons standing 75 metres above the water.
Don’t.
Look.
Down.
The sunset over the mainland provides a nice distraction, though there is definite swaying from side to side towards the end of the ride as we arrive into VinWonder. Or VinPearl, I’m still not sure. There are great white letters on the hillside saying VinPearl, visible from the mainland, but the website talks of VinWonders.
Overall, this place is fake, like a Disneyland, but clearly hollow as if on the set of The Truman Show movie. It’s hard to tell if it’s built for brighter days ahead or is a white elephant, not drawing enough crowds to justify all the shops and restaurants. We walk through an indoor market where open sided stalls have only one or two of each item, and in the food cart each stall holder looks optimistically at you as if you might be their first customer of the day.
The buildings look pretty, in a fake kind of way. We eventually find our way to the show through the giant gate of a castle and join a growing crowd sitting on the floor looking at a castle frontage. At 7:30pm, after a countdown the ‘Tata Show’ begins. I only know Tata Motors and Tata Steel - I’d assumed they’d just sponsored a light show.
Way off the mark, instead we got a 40 minute show about Princess Tata and the Ocean Prince, in a battle against the Dark Lord to protect the Jewel of Happiness. The light projections onto the castle are excellent, like Vivid in Sydney the acting is all a bit over the top but who doesn’t like a cheeky parrot and monkey, or dancers dressed as jellyfish or seahorses, or other creatures on roller skates, or a large unwieldy dragon wheeled onto the forecourt.
It’s all a bit crazy and over the top, like everything else to do with this island it seems. Seb says it’s the best show he’s ever seen, and is deaf to reminders of his screams in the queue to come over here. There are long queues back for the cable car but after enjoying the view back over the brightly lit island, and neon writing on some of the buildings on the mainland, a short taxi ride drops us back at Aaron Boutique, ready for bed for all.