A different kind of fun

A few days ago we took a boat tour around to some of the islands off Nha Trang and it turned into quite the little experience! But before I go into that story I will tell you what we did during the majority of our time in this seaside town. We drank beer. Not a lot, that would be really bad for the dwindling budget, but enough to wake-up our long forgotten "good beer taste buds." We found a BREWPUB. Yes, you are reading the lines correctly. A brewpub in Vietnam. Ahhhhh. The best part? There were beach chairs, beach umbrellas, cooling waters from the South China Sea, and BEER. We literally spent 3 days here, sipping cool brews and reading and relaxing. A nice break from constant travels and moving.

Jay gets the big one

Julie and her jugs

The boat trip. We knew when we paid our small sum of $ to take this tour that there was some serious potential we might hate it. But it was inexpensive and worth the risk in case we liked it. Well - we liked it and hated it for many reasons but not the reasons we expected. The tour is sold as a party tour - you go to four different islands and you get to snorkel, spend some time on the beach, drink rice wine, use their "floating bar" and party to music on board. We decided to go because of the islands and the snorkeling. This was the cheapest way for us to test out what the reefs were like to see if we wanted to spend money on diving. Good thing we did because based on the snorkeling, we didn't think the diving would have been worth it.

Here I am getting ready to jump in the water off our boat. You wouldn't BELIEVE how many people they packed onto this boat. I am guessing around 40? The unexpected part that made the trip really interesting and fun was that the majority of the tourists were Vietnamese. Our experience in the other beachy towns of Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia is that the towns serve mostly Western tourists. But in both Dalat and Nha Trang, we have seen far more Vietnamese tourists than Westerners and it has been wonderful! I am guessing this is testament to the rise of the middle class in this country and to the economic prosperity that many families are beginning to experience. These folks are well educated and some even spoke a tiny bit of English. What they missed in their education was environmental awareness and conservation. And our short time snorkeling opened our eyes up to this gap. We didn't have high expectations for the snorkeling as there were a ton of tour boats, some fish farms, and a floating village nearby. This means that there is probably a lot of nutrient overloading and physical destruction from snorkelers. We saw this first hand. At first we didn't see too many corals and I thought it wasn't going to get any better but, of all things, as we entered the shallow water (< 7 ft.) we discovered a little swath of beautiful and healthy coral (see below). As we swam along marveling at the hardy beautiful corals, we came across this....
Ignorant destruction. I wouldn't say these folks are the strongest swimmers in the world. But with floats and life vests readily available, there was no excuse for this. Our tour guide also requested, before we got in the water, that people not touch "anything". Maybe that didn't translate to standing on the coral? My first reaction was to swim up to them and yell. But I held my ground and watched, hoping that they would eventually get off the coral because of the dirty looks I was sending their way. But they didn't move and I couldn't take it anymore...so I swam up to them and asked them to stop standing on the coral. I am fairly certain that they understood me because they excused themselves by showing me that they had a mask but no snorkel. I wanted to get them some snorkels from the boat, but the mass of stinging jellies in between me and the boat made me think twice. So I fumed and watched them chatter away with one another, showing no signs of movement from their coral floor. To make matters even worse, Jay and I noticed another family in the shallow water. One younger man exclaimed something loudly to his family in Vietnamese and lifted up above the water a big head of live branching coral. The two of us groaned. What could we do? As Americans in Vietnam, we felt like we really shouldn't be opening our mouths and bossing people around. But as advocates for the environment, this kind of blatent destruction is almost impossible to ignore. When the young man brought up another large head of live table coral, I officially lost it and could hold back no longer. The younger man had passed the branching coral off to an older guy (his father?) and the two of them were swimming on their floats with the coral back to the boat. I intercepted them and said, as kindly and sweetly as possible, that they shouldn't be doing this and that they need to care about their reefs. The older man just smiled at me and handed me the coral, which I happily took. As I tried to explain to them one more time why they should care, the younger man dropped his large coral head with a big grin on his face. This basically signaled to me that they KNEW what they were doing was wrong....but they were going to do it anyway. Only when they were called on their actions did they stop. In the meantime, I had the largest piece of coral I have ever held in my hands. I took a deep breathe and returned it to the bottom far below any depth these people would be capable of swimming to.

That was the bad part of the trip.

Lunch was another experience, but far more entertaining. All of the benches on the boat were turned into a lunch table that later served as a dance floor. After everyone ate, the crew members set-up a bunch of instruments and wham - we had a singing dance party. Now, I don't know if I need to remind anyone, but we are in karaoke land here. They love singing! So we were on this boat with maybe about 10 other Westerners and 30 Vietnamese....and they wanted all of us to sing and dance. The Vietnamese went wild - clapping (out of sync) with the music and laughing and singing along with the lead singer of the band. We had about 5 other boats of the same size rafted up to our boat and all the Vietnamese from those boats were cluttered around the edge of our boat to get closer to the action. Their sense of personal space is WAY different from ours and you could really see that difference here (this is the 13th most populous country in the world so space is a rarity). The lead singer tried to get some of the Westerners up on the "dance" floor to dance and sing, but I don't think they realized that you needed to be <5'5'' to participate without taking your head off on the roof! They also tried to get us Westerners to sing - but we are not from karaoke -loving places. So we all watched and listened to the fun-loving Vietnamese sing and dance. It was a riot and a real treat to see how they go on vacation!

Now we are in the town of Hoi An - right in the middle of the Vietnamese coastline. We plan on spending a few days here visiting the famous tailors (I can get a pair of jeans long enough for me made for $15!) and some of the Cham ruins. Then we head north to Hanoi and the mountains!