Today has been an abysmally, appallingly bad day. To cheer myself up, I'm going to write about some really good things that happened over the last few days.

Firstly, on Monday we walked to a Cham temple in Nha Trang. It wasn't as exciting as the ruined Cham temple in the jungle outside Hoi An, but it looks pretty in the photos. The Cham race used to be the most powerful and dominant across this area of South-East Asia.

temple with a dancing Shiva above the door

me in modest dress so I can go inside the temple without showing my knees

asian faces

pretty garden

On Tuesday, we rented a motorbike because we were too lazy to walk the 10 minutes to the train station. Then we had a motorbike and thought we ought to go somewhere, so we drove to Ba Ho waterfall. Ba Ho means three lakes. There are three lakes at this waterfall. To get there, you have to drive down one of the bumpiest dirt tracks I've ever been down, then walk through jungle to get to the bottom of the waterfall, and then scramble over rocks and jump across rivers to climb up the waterfall. Maybe it's exaggerated in my head but it felt like an absolute mission. Dung said I couldn't do it. I pouted and sulked to demonstrate my maturity and agility and ability to climb the rocks. He was convinced, so we climbed up to the top. It was so fun, and so beautiful.

waterfall

this would be why it's difficult to leave hanoi

Almost as impressive as the views, were the women stationed at the bottom of the waterfall with a couple of pots and an open fire. If you ordered food at the bottom, they'd run up the rocks when it was ready to deliver it to you. These rocks are steep; I found it difficult to climb up with my boyfriend carrying my bag for me, yet these women are running up and down carrying bowls of soup and fruit, all day long. About halfway up, a lady had brought up a whole stove, grill, and fresh river prawns. Dung tried two and didn't shut up about them for the rest of the week, he said they were the best prawns ever. We got some chicken soup on the way down. Apparently the chicken was very succulent mountain chicken, whatever that means, although you know I ate around it. The soup cost less than $1, for enough to feed both of us and served on a mountainside. People who say the Vietnamese can't do customer service, need to shut up.

Yesterday we booked a snorkelling boat tour. We got to cruise around the islands off the coast of Nha Trang, go snorkelling in the coral reefs, and then dry off in the sun on the roof of the boat, before more snorkelling. I saw starfish, lion fish, banner fish, some kind of pipe fish, and more. I want to go scuba diving again, because deeper down they have even more exciting fish. Hopefully this will happen, although I don't know yet.

epic lunch spread on the boat. everyone else was crap at eating but dung and i polished off our corner.

Another good thing that happened, this morning I went for a run along the seafront. I ran past a man doing yoga on a park bench, and a few minutes later he caught up with me. He told me that my feet splay when I run, which makes my running less efficient, slower, and can cause joint problems. He said I should try to point my feet inwards, and after a few years (!) this will become natural, and running will be much easier. Sometimes I don't like unsolicited advice, because it's like "Check out how much I know," but this man was a yoga instructor, and it seemed like he just genuinely wanted me to run better. Gotta love random acts of kindness. Some things happen that make you realise there are bad people in the world, and you need the balance of realising there are good people too, otherwise you just feel really shit. More photos:

buffalo on the road

dung's t-shirt - gutted having no curry growing up

plate o' snails