Friday – August 14, 2026
Having had two really enjoyable days of sightseeing in Nha Trang, I decided today would be less about touring and more focused. I want to buy a back-up phone and get a haircut. I have always enjoyed the experience of haircuts in foreign lands. Some particularly memorable ones were in Thessaloniki in Greece, Dubai in the UAE and Bastogne in Belgium.
I am hoping to spend more time in air-conditioned comfort today because I am feeling the effects of the last two days spent predominantly outdoors. So I ask ChatGPT (who NEVER steers me wrong) for a recommendation and he suggests I go to a nice, modern indoor mall. Sounds good.
I get on the 11:00 a.m. tender and grab a Grab. $6 later, I am at the mall. It’s nice. It’s cool. Only two problems: no phone store and no barber. Shit. Now it’s back out into the heat.
I get on Google Maps to find a nearby place that has phones. I make my way a few blocks and when Google says: “You’ve arrived”, I haven’t. I search for 10 minutes the surrounding area and this is not the place. Shit. It’s too f***ing hot. This can wait. What about a haircut? This time Google Maps doesn’t let me down, except… the shop is Russian. Russian barbers, Russian clients, Russian prices. Нет, спасибо.(“No thank you” in Russian. See what I did there?)
I’m getting hungry so I pop into a little restaurant across the street from the Ruskies. Fantastic meal. Unbelievable prices.
Walking back to the mall, I pass at least a dozen places offering spa services and massages. The only two massages I’ve paid for in my life were in the last 6 months. $80 NZ (New Zealand) for a Thai Massage in Auckland, about $50 US for one in Dubai and… wait for it…
Less than $7.00 US for an hour here in Nha Trang!! It was wonderful.
The tender ride back to the ship is brutal. It feels like 140 degrees heat index and takes seemingly forever. I start hallucinating and fantasizing about taking an ice plunge in a gigantic beer cooler.
It’s happy hour (2 for 1) so… well, why not?
Now it’s time for dinner at the Stammtisch and a chance to make some new German-speaking friends. So much fun! Plus my German speaking ability increases dramatically (or so I think) after a couple of beers. Dinner was great. The company was better. Then someone mentioned that this is Karaoke night…
And because it’s a German Stammtisch, naturally I had another bier (sic). Vielleicht zwei? Karaoke, you say? It just so happens my Lieblingsband (favorite band) is German. Santiano is their name.
I don’t sing. I don’t dance. I don’t swim. I don’t do a lot of things that I am now considering as I reinvent myself.
Next thing I know, I’m singing not one, not two, but three different songs at Karaoke night. Two were “auf Deutsch” (in German) because they were songs from Santiano. Thankfully, there were only about five of us attending tonight. Apparently, the attendance at Karaoke night ranges from almost no one to a couple of dozen. This was a slow night.
There is video proof of this but I’m not ready to post it just yet. The singing is bad and the outfit is even worse as I went full-on German this evening including wearing socks with my Oofos slides.
Maybe some time after many beers, I’ll edit this post and add the video.
More to come??????
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