Wallowing in mineral mud and soaking in mineral water the perfect way to spend the day before a 12 hour nighttime bus journey.

Our last day in Nah Trang and we’d got up late due to late night so we spent some time wondering around Nah Trang looking at the shops but still managing not to make it to a beach that was supposed to be one of the best in Vietnam. Instead we went to Thap Ba hot springs.

We arrived at the tranquil out of town oasis paid 500,000VND (about 15GBP) between the three of us and spent two hours luxuriating in mud baths and mineral water.

Our first treatment was a 20 minute soak in a private mud bath. As we were lead to the bath a man pulled a plug and it began filling with runny green mineral mud. We got in smothering ourselves in the green liquid and using a coconut scoop to poor it over our heads. No sooner had we submerged ourselves than a photographer appeared taking some photos of us.

When our 20 minutes was up we were instructed to lie on the sun beds baking the mud into our skin before going to the mineral showers and washing it off. Our next treatment was a wall of jets of water sprayed at different angles; a kind of walk in water massage. Then onto the mineral pool where we were to lounge in 40 degree mineral water for 45 minutes. I barley lasted 10 minutes before the hot water combined with the heat of the sun became too much for me and I had to get out dangling just my feet into the water.

We decided to go to the mineral swimming pool for a cooling dip only to find the swimming pool was heated to 38 degrees and was like swimming in a bath. Far too hot for me so I retired to the sun bed for 10 minutes before it was time to shower and head back to Nah Trang to catch the night bus.

* Posted by j150vsc on 09/09/2007.