Taking the kids into Nha Trang

After 4 days here, we decided to take the kids into Nha Trang, a city 15 kms from the farm. Now, this doesn't seem like a lot, but that's 15km, on a motorbike, on the country's major highway (they only really have one). This makes it about a 45 minute trip. The city itself is quite nice - its a major resort city and has a beautiful beach. It also has a reputation of being a major party town...

Getting into town was alright. We took 2 bikes into town, one driven by my wife, the other by my sister in law. Sister also brought a friend. So 6 people (2 pint sized) on 2 bikes. It wasn't as bad as it sounds. Kid1 sat on the front of the bike and kid2 was in a front harness. She was alright until the end of the ride. Now, its been 5 a half years since I've been to Nha Trang, my knowledge of the city has degraded, and it has changed a lot. We found some nice beach chairs in the shade to rent (for 5 bucks). But they didn't have any washroom facilities (showers would have been handy). If we had turned left instead of right though (from where we parked our bikes), we could  have rented chairs at Louisiane, a micro-brewery/restaurant/beach club. They had washrooms and shower facilities there. The beach itself was nice, its fairly clean, the water was good. It was too choppy and deep to do any swimming though. Kid1 really enjoyed playing in the sand. I was happy to show him how to build sandcastles. After supper we went to a local amusement park and kid1 really enjoyed that, although the park is very low quality. I would say that most rides do not keep up with any sort of safety code.

The biggest take away from this trip was the wife and I needed to communicate better. To be honest, our lack of communication constituted an epic fail when it came to trying to find supper. I wanted kid1 to have some western food and instead of taking him to a proper burger place (there are some in Nha Trang), we ended up at a bar and the burger patty was inedible. It also cost us 10 bucks for the burger and 3 pops. The bar, was a bar. Not exactly the best place to take a family, although it was early so the drunks were not out yet. My wife and I recognize that we had a communication break down and we both really have to work on telling the other what we are expecting. We both have to listen to each other as well.

We got home and both kids were exhausted. Since there were no shower facilities, both kids needed a shower when they got home. Kid1 finally got to eat something at 7:30pm. I definitely want to head back to the beach (and bring some buckets and shovels with us, the sand is wonderful to play with) but I'm not that sure about taking the kids on the bike again. Kid2 was squirmy on the ride home until she fell asleep. Kid1 also wanted to sleep on the bike and that was harder to manage when he is riding on the front of the bike. We will be rethinking this one...