Once we arrived back in Saigon we had to wait until that night for the sleeper bus taking us to Nha Trang. We spent the time we hung around down Saigon eating Pho, visiting the depressing War Remnants Museum, walking the streets in the pouring rain, having ice cream and visiting the Ben Thanh market. When the bus came, we left Saigon at 9:00pm and arrived in Nha Trang at 6:00am the next morning. We killed a few more hours at an internet cafe and exploring Nha Trang before our shuttle took us to Whale Island, a resort on an island 90km outside of Nha Trang. It's a deserted island so once the bus arrived there we still had to take a fifteen minute boat to get to the resort.

We spent the next three days relaxing and doing absolutely nothing. It was raining off and on the entire time so it forced us to stay under the shelter of our beach-side hut or the public lounge. It was a nice little resort where they don't use cash on the island because food is included and everything else is charged to your room. We were fed amazing seafood three times a day and the time in between meals consisted of sleeping, reading, hanging out, running into the ocean at night, playing pool and watching a poorly-translated-from-German subtitled version of Bee Movie. During a rare sunny period, we went for a hike to the middle of the island to get a beautiful 360 view of the entire bay and island. We also spent New Year's Eve on the island with the twenty other tourists. There were no fireworks or much celebration, just a nice, quiet passing into 2009.

After our time on the island we went back to Nha Trang to meet up with my family for a few hours. We had a quick lunch and exchanged more presents before my sister and brother-in-law had to go to catch a flight. We spent the rest of the day wandering Nha Trang, feeding monkeys, walking on the beach and chilling at a beach-side bar with my mom, brother and niece. Later that evening we said our goodbyes and caught another overnight bus to take us back to Saigon.

We got back into Saigon early the next morning while everything was still closed, so we checked into a hotel we booked a few days earlier to freshen up and get some more sleep. Right next to our hotel was the "Go Go Go" bar that was still open at 5:00am and conspicuously full of scantily dressed Vietnamese women and drunken foreigners. Yup. Anyways, it was our last day in Saigon so we did the things we didn't have time to do earlier like check out more museums, eat Pho soup for the last time, walk around the posh parts of downtown, visit a few markets to buy omiyage (presents to give to Japanese co-workers) and lastly check out the amazing Vietnamese Water Puppet show (which we had been meaning to do on the last three times we were in Saigon). Right after the show we grabbed our bags at the hotel and caught a cab to the airport to catch our midnight flight.

It was a little surreal to be leaving Vietnam after spending so much time there but it was bound to happen. We re-packed our packs at the airport, put on our warmest, smelly clothes to prepare for the re-entry into cold Hokkaido and said goodbye to Vietnam. It was an overnight flight back with a three hour layover in Seoul (two of which were spent sleeping on a lounge bench) before we arrived back at noon in snowy Sapporo. Back at Callie's place her pipes were frozen and her heater fought to start up but eventually we were able to warm up again. It wasn't long before I had to venture back outside to catch my three-hour train home and find my car under a meter of snow. I was really missing the 30 degree weather right about then. It was sad to come back to my cold, lonely apartment in my little inaka town after having so much fun in the Vietnamese sun. I've promised myself I'll be back there again one day. Until then it's back to work, running around with sick children, snowboarding and waiting for spring to come.