February 11 Nha Trang to Quy Nhon

Not much in the way of highlights today.  Most of the day was spent on the bus but at least we stopped a few times for photos (even if we passed by much better ones).  The geography was a mixture of hills and seascapes but once again it was cloudy and misty so the full impact of it was missing.  Our first stop was one of the Cham towers but I didn't find it over ly interesting other than as another example of a fantastic construction project by an ancient people.  The site was right in town so didn't lend itself to many decent photos.

At lunch I had a bowl of baby corn and shrimp soup that wasn't too bad.  Then I tucked into a plateful of "Jumping Sea Snails".  They are much like Portuguese periwinkles but considerably larger.  I would have preferred a butter garlic dipping sauce but they served it with a very spicy ginger sauce.  The manager insisted on picking the snails out of their shells for me even after I told him I had done it many times.  As is often the case my meal raised a few eyebrows and brought a few people over to my table to have a look and sniff the shells.  Apparently some people thought that the snails would be slimy.

Dinner was also a bit of an adventure.  I started with eel sausages.  They were ok but could just have easily been caribou, pork or virtually anything else.  They were a little on the dry side and had a pleasant, somewhat spicy flavour but there was no way to tell that they were eel.  My main course was a steamed fish that I thought, from the menu, might be grouper.  It wasn't grouper but I will have to check with Vu to see if he can tell me what the Vietnamese means.  Whatever it was it was exquisite (once I scraped the coriander away LOL).  The flesh was sweet and very mild as was the broth in the bottom of the plate.   It came with a salad which was smothered in coriander so that was ignored.  It also came with rice paper which I presume was to wrap pieces of the fish along with the salad and cucumbers.  In my opinion that would have masked the wonderful taste of the fish so I just ate it alone and unwrapped.  A number of the group was already there when I got to the restaurant and several people had to come over to examine my dishes.  It was the most expensive meal I have had on the trip but was worth every dong and I enjoyed it immensely.

The hotel here seems quite new and is very nice.  My room is huge and I have a decent view of the sea and the beach.  My only complaint is that I wish I had been given a room one floor higher where there is free internet access.  As it is I will have to go to the lobby and try to find a place to plug in.  That sounds like a task for the morning before breakfast and check out.

Another LONG bus ride to Hoi An tomorrow with a stop at the site of the My Lai massacre...