Island in the sun
Trip Start
Nov 01, 2007
1
20
26
Trip End
Nov 20, 2007
Nha Trang,
Vietnam
Thursday, November 15, 2007
So, I am here on an island paradise off the coast of Vietnam. It's a very exclusive island, with something like 30 detached or semi-detached bamboo and reed bungalows on one corner of the island. It feels very unreal to me, especially as I walk along the path between my bungalow and the restaurant, almost like I'm on a film set. Of course, this corner of our remote island has been created expressly for tourism, but it's nicely done, I think.
What to do on this island in the sun? after breakfast, the first thing or me was s dip in the lovely blue sea in the bay. It was refreshingly cool, a start contrast to the humidity on land. After my drip which became a small snorkelling expedition, I retired to a sun lounger and lazed for a couple of hours, shaded by a large tropical umbrella.
Life was calm and tranquil, real down time for me, which is something I rarely get in my life in Higham Ferrers. I decided to treat myself to some pampering and had a pedicure and manicure whilst lying on my sun lounger. Now, my fingers and tow mails are a bright turquoise! It's a good colour because hopefully it'll hide the dirt and grunge that I seem to be accumulating as I travel - very yuk, I know.
The resort provided a very good and quite enormous lunch - I'm sure by the end of this trip in Vietnam, I'll resemble the island because I'll be the size of a whale! Not good. Eating with the rest of the group, lunch took a couple of leisurely hours, plenty of time to laugh and to relax.
More swimming in the sea, more sunning myself on the beach. Today, my life has been truly hard work. It's good to do very little - for a while. I think two weeks of this would drive me crazy because I'm so used to being busy all the time.
I took a very interesting boat trip around the island in the afternoon. It took about an hour, which should give an indication of how very small the island actually is. What was most interesting to see were the floating fisheries around the island's coast. Each fishery seemed to be constructed of a grid of wooden planks, he sort you can buy from your local DIY store. They were bolted together and lashed with ropes to floating drums. The grids were anything from approximately 20 metres square. Each had a hut or shack on it, and the larger ones would have also what I can only guess were toilets. Every floating fishery had one or two dogs at leas, and they would bark manically as the boat we cruised past.
Our captain called across to a few men before stopping at one fishery where we stopped and were invited to climb on to the floating structure. It's much more difficult than it looks to even stand on the wood. The plans are lashed so that they're about 2 feet apart so you can either walk along on one, as though you're an Olympic gymnast on the beam, or have one foot on each plank. They were maybe 3" wide, so not exactly enormous. The boys al hopped on and crossed to the centre of the floating structure, but I didn't go as far as them. For me, it was enough to move a couple of feet from the boat in order to better see what was going on.
In each square in the grid there were deep nets in the sea, and in the water were fish. I have no idea what kind of fish, being somewhat fish phobic myself, but the ones I saw were scary critters, with mean-looking faces and spikes everywhere. I guess seeing the fish decided me for not going further along the planks. If I'd lost my balance and fallen in, I'd have been a very unhappy bunny!
It was truly interesting to experience, though. None of us speak Vietnamese, and none of them spoke English, so communication was limited to gestures and smiles. I'd have loved to be able to ask about what they do. Do they live there? I think maybe they do some of the time because so many of the larger shacks seemed like homes. They had TV aerials and TVs inside, radio cassette players and people of different ages moving around checking their nets or sorting fish. I didn't see women, though, only men and boys. I wanted to know about the dogs because they clearly have an important role in this microcosm of floating island living, but what I can only guess at. All the dogs looked alert and healthy but I'm sure they were more than pets. In such a hard way of life, they must guard each person's fiefdom.
Back on land, I transferred my photos to my portable hard drive - and then disaster struck! My hard drive locked up and the reset button is so useless it may as well not be there. I'm in a panic now in case I've lost all my photos from the previous two weeks, and also acutely aware that if I can't fix the hard drive, that I must limit the photos I take over the next few days because I only have 3 compact flash cards. Of course, I could shoot smaller pictures, but I'm only working in JPEG which is already lossy, so I'm concerned about the loss of detail. What a bummer it would be to take the perfect photograph and then lose the detail and quality. So far taking the hard drive apart isn't working. Hoorah for the trusty Swiss Army knife; I don't have jeweller's screwdrivers with me but the blade of the knife has at least allowed me to disconnect the battery.
