As you know we were waylaid in Nha Trang due to my morning sickness which was really pretty bad over the last week. I mean it's no big deal really; it's just par for the course with pregnancy. But when we set out the other morning it was just virtually impossible to progress with me having to “pull in”, as it were, every few minutes. I was really in a pretty miserable state so we phoned our lovely guest house in Nha Trang which we'd checked out of less than an hour before saying that we'd be coming back. To their delight. Because they had missed Luca who is treated like royalty here. Seriously. I may have mentioned it before but he is treated like a mini-celebrity everywhere we've been in Southeast Asia. With strangers high-fiving him, coo-ing over him and photographing him. And Vietnam is no exception and in this family friendly, and generally friendly, guest house it's particularly the case.

We stayed at the Ha Van hotel, just a few minutes walk from the beach, which is run by a young Vietnamese/ French (or possibly Québécois?) couple and a host of very helpful and friendly Vietnamese staff. Mainly female. All of whom love Luca. From dusk to dawn he is fawned over, coo-ed at, tickled and playfully teased. A very tasty breakfast is served on the rooftop of the Ha Van and it is here that the daily adoration begins. Every breakfast includes a generous and interesting selection of in-season fruit to include; melon, pineapple, bananas, dragon fruit and lychee but we always leave laden down with bags or baskets of extra fruit bestowed, usually in exchange for a kiss on the cheek, to Luca. The chef is particularly fond of him and always prepares him not just one, but two boiled eggs to take away with him too.


Luca enjoys the attention and playing and is very at ease with the staff chatting away to all of them. Telling them all about the minutia of a 3 year olds days; things like how he fell and cut his knee and going swimming at the beach, etc. His audience seem to think that his incessant chatter is really cute. The street vendors on the way down to the beach all know him by sight and shout "Hello Boy" to which he always waves and says "Hello" back in a kind of a way that suggests this is just normal attention for a 3 year old in his every day life. You know - the usual. No big deal. When himself and Phil were going to the shop the other day a girl pulled up on a motorbike and said: "Hello Luca". She then went on: "I'm from the restaurant". She was one of the waitresses from one of the restaurants here that we ate in one night and she had remembered him. I wonder if he'll find it hard to blend back in to relative obscurity when we leave Asia?

We've all really enjoyed our stay in Nha Trang but will, once again, try to leave tomorrow.... We have a friend who shall remain nameless (but you know who you are Edward Boilson) who motorbiked along Highway 1 a few years ago and said that he ended up waylaid in Nha Trang too. He actually left it once, progressed half an hour away and turned back. So morning sickness cycling challenges notwithstanding there is an allure to this place. Maybe there are some hidden Homeric Lotus Eaters amongst the population here, I don't know, but it is a very easy place to linger for some reason. Everywhere is within walking distance - the beach and a very wide selection of great cafes, bars and restaurants. The livin', as they say, is easy. There's something of a French air to it. But more Biarritz perhaps than St Michel? An old Vietnamese man walks up and down the beach everyday looking to practice his French with Francophones. He had just left a couple of young French guys the other day and headed towards us and posed the question, in French, whether or not we spoke French. To which I replied, proudly, in French of course, that we did but that we weren't French. Anyway we didn't make the grade for some reason. He just walked on by us. I would have loved an opportunity to ask him if he had learnt his French during the French occupation of Vietnam. There are lots of brilliant French restaurants here too. The real deal. French owned, run etc. And in one such restaurant the other night, "Refuge" we all spoke exclusively French all night with the owner as did all of the customers who were all Vietnamese. I loved it of course. But our no. 1 Restaurant vote has to go to "Lanterns" where the Vietnamese fare is divine, reasonable and, what is more, the restaurant supports the local orphanage to include funding university for the children who get a university place. You have to go along early for dinner to secure a table. On our first night there (our second attempt to get a table though) we sat beside an Australian family who were just leaving as we arrived and they said to us that they had just had possibly one of the best meals of their lives there - for 15 Aussie dollars. They recommended the ginger chicken and sauteed water spinach, which I ordered and Phil had the claypot fish which were all yummy. Luca had a penne pesto worthy of an Italian trattoria. And it was very reasonable too. Our entire delicious meal for the 3 of us, drinks (smoothies for Luca and I and beers for Phil) and desserts, etc. came to the equivalent of about 12 Euro.

But all good things come to an end. As well as all bad things. Our time here is looking spent now as my morning sickness has abated over the last couple of days. So we've packed up the panniers and our bikes and Highway 1 awaits. So it's off to explore more wonderful places we go... tomorrow. Hopefully.