101 Challenges:

Location: Nha Trang - Vietnam

Today we both woke up with two of the worst hangovers… ever. Again.

The day before, Lindsay arrived in at Nha Trang at 6am. Check-in to the hotel wasn’t until 9am (a lie) and so, he utilised these 3 hours by farting about on the webernet and writing. 0900 hours eventually came and as the sun was already up high and shining, Lindsay thought he’d stay up and shine with it too.

10:30 arrived and Lindsay was finally granted entrance to his room. One quick shower later and he went to awake his older and sleepy headed brother. We reacquainted ourselves with each other (normally this comes in the form of a grunt and nod) and we headed off into the town centre to order and consume breakfast.

Lee had already spent one day and a night here and before enthusiastically showing off the surroundings to little Lindsay, he advised him of the dangers of Nha Trang. Dangers? Yes people. Dangers.

On St. Paddy’s day, Lee went out partying as you do and, on his walk home he was approached by four women. Nothing unusual there he thought to himself. However, on this instance, nothing was to be as it seemed. The four women introduced themselves not by name or kind gesture, but by one of them grabbing Lee’s willy and the other three patting him on the head, arms, back and legs. Very friendly folks he said to himself in a French accent for some unknown reason.

Unfortunately for him, these friendly folks were in fact thieving little b*stards, and as he was distracted by having little Lee in the clutches of some random 40 year old woman’s grip, her acquaintances were rummaging through his pockets – and, stealing 300,000 VND (£10).

Lindsay was advised (and you are too if you ever visit this place) to only carry money that you intend to spend, or money that you are happy to lose, and for the love of Christ, don’t take out your wallet or camera etc – they’ll just get nicked.

Alternatively, if you like, fill your pockets with nothing but folded paper and shape it to look like cash – that way you’ll get a free grope! They’ll never see that coming! Lindsay’s just bought 17 newspapers and a pair of scissors.

Lee has since started walking the streets in vain at night. This is in the hope of a repeat grope, but this time ensuring he has no cash in his pockets. Lindsay hasn't returned back to the hotel once since arriving before 5am and his flip-flops look incredibly worn out.

Our hotel was nicely situated in the centre of town, merely a few seconds walk to the shops and outlets. 4.23 minutes walk to the beach. Nice.

         

Apparently, the best combination of words to describe Nha Trang are “it’s the Spain of Vietnam”. Everything here is for the tourist. From French run Steak Houses (if you ever visit here, it would be a total crime to miss out the Buffalo Steak House) to the lines of excursion and tour shops, to the endless pubs and clubs.

We bumped into two English lads called Ritchie and Simon (one name each obviously) on the beach and shared a few beers with them. Ritchie works as a promotions manager for the Sailor Club on the beach front (not that kind of bar) and is from Blackpool. Simon, is notoriously well known around these here parts – and 99.4% of his notoriety is certainly not positive - but we liked him. He will tell you he is 28 (looks 48) and used to work out here too for another bar but jacked it in for some reason or another.

As we sat talking for a while and gaining priceless information on the where to go’s and where not to go’s we were, as you would expect from Vietnam, invited to join in a Poker match. After no hesitation whatsoever, we both said yes and with a few more relaxing and sociable beers necked, we joined up with the nicest ex-pats from all over the world for a wee game of Texas Hold-em.

Simon took us to a lovely little bar which is run by an ex-pat Scot and more endearing is the fact that a big Beer Saigon is only… wait for it… 8000 VND (that’s about 25p and is good for a branded bottle of beer, but at over double the price of Hanoi’s 12p pint’s – we found it hard to get excited).

Gregg (an Australian guy of about 55 with the positive outlook, but experienced, view of life, and the mentality of a 20 year old) Svente (a Swedish “lad” of about 60 with an even younger view of life than Gregg) Gordon (a man of about 50 who abandoned Scotland in the latter part of the 20th Century to grow an incredibly gay-looking moustache and move to Ozzyland) and another couple of incredibly friendly guys (who’s names we’ve since forgotten due to already being intoxicated at the time of meeting them). These were to be our opponents.

And here is that traitor of a Scot - a proud bearer of a very gay-looking moutache;

A few more introductory drinks were ordered and we all moved on to Zippo bar. This is the only place in Nha Trang where you’re allowed to stage a game of poker. We say allowed, but gambling here is illegal – the bar staff just don’t care and with beer Saigon priced at a nice-but-not-amazing 10,000 VND (34p) we began to care less and less too, as the day went on.

Anyhow, long story short is… Lindsay lost 600,000 VND (£20) and Lee won the tournament – netting a staggering 800,000 VND (which is, to the annoyance of Lindsay more than £20).

Initially we thought that Simon would be taking us to some dirty back alley place to face a quarry of hardened criminal-like thugs of players. Lindsay made reference to this within 28 seconds of meeting the lads saying “I’m so glad you lot are old. I was expecting to meet a quarry of hardened criminal-like thugs of players. If the game went wrong for any reason and you lot were to try and stab me, I’d have at least 57 seconds' reaction time whilst your shaky hands attempted to pick up the knife”. Thankfully everybody laughed.

The above picture has been deliberately chosen to hide identities. Some of them maybe wanted for all we know.

A delightfully fun, entertaining and relaxing (but stressful at times) day had passed and so, we’ve agreed to stay on here at Nha Trang in order to play the men again on Friday. Lindsay really can’t afford to lose again.

It was dark when we finished the game and so it was another quick shower (2 in one day is extremely out of the ordinary for us) and after jumping into our night time gear, we headed off for dinner – accompanied by a few more beers (they didn't walk with us, we met them there, ripped off their heads and drunk their blood).

After an incredibly beautiful and bloody steak each we went to a few bars and checked out the talent – which there was a lot of. Jugglers, magicians, musicians… everything!

We particularly enjoyed the health warnings, the Vietnamese have placed upon their cigarettes. Apparently, smoking is gay. Don't smoke kids;

We eventually hit the Sailor Club on the beach and were expected to pay 60,000 VND (£2) each to enter. “Do you know who we’re not?” we asked the door staff before repeating Ritchie’s name at least 76 times and saying we should be on the guest list. Sh*t, the stewards actually had a guest list.

They asked us our names and with Lindsay’s eagle eyed vision, he scanned the A4 piece of paper the steward foolishly failed to conceal and introduced us as Michael Stringman and Michael Voorderbank. Easy. They waved us through, without payment – we liked that. Lindsay was proud of his blagging skills, but Lee was quick to point out that the staff just let us through as we we’re annoying them.

The music was appalling. Hip Hop constantly blared through the PA system so, on the very rare occasion when something we knew came on (ABBA, Cheeky Girls, Celine Dion etc) we danced and pranced around that dance floor like nothing you’ve ever seen (or would like to see). We ended up having an absolutely amazing time – not too certain anyone else who had to endure the pain and suffering of our groovy bodies did though.

Random picture time. Lindsay got a huge fright when the sun fell out of the sky and landed on our table during our earlier meal;

Anyhoo, sorry about that. Silly o’clock in the morning arrived and so, refusing to bring a close to the day, we headed off to the "Why Not Bar", after all, why not? We can’t really remember much after that. Blurred flashbacks of dancing like idiots, high fives, and lots more liquid pleasures. However, we do remember leaving.

On the way back to our hotel at the exact same spot as where on the previous night Lee had been robbed, a motor bike approached. Off jumped 3 girls and two more appeared from…..well could have been anywhere as our vision was very blurry, but we knew there were 5 of them. The demonic eyes were the same as Lee had encountered the night before when he was being accosted. The robbers were going to have a second go.

As they snaked their way towards us with there outstretched kleptomaniac hands, Lee put his in his pocket and as he held firmly to his cash he thought “here we go, a nice free grope” (this time in a camp German voice for unknown reason).

Lindsay, with his female intuition didn’t have to be told that these were the robbers and before Lee could have a bit of fun, the younger of the two of us turned round to face them and shouted F*** Off!. This was blared out with such a ferociousness that the theives immediately disappeared (We do actually mean disappeared, as we said before we couldn't see well and so, anything farther than 3 meters from us was invisible). Lee was gutted, no freebie tonight. Lindsay was even more gutted - he thought the day and night was cheap until he realised he had 17 cut up copies of the Bangkok Post in his back pocket.