In an Octopus' Garden
Trip Start
Apr 22, 2008
1
15
26
Trip End
Sep 01, 2008
Nha Trang,
Vietnam
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The town has some great restaurants, is experiencing a boom in hotel development, is the best scuba diving in Vietnam and.....bumbuddabum budabumbumbumBUM....home of the Ms Universe 2008 competition. Please contain your excitement. After site seeing and chilling at the beach for a day I decided to head underwater while Kate, who failed to send in her scuba registration after completing the course work and open water dives, went island hopping on Mama Linh's boat tour
Devotee at Po Nagar Cham Tower
. How did she pick ML's? Tow reasons. First, we saw fliers for other tours in our guest house that showed monkeys dressed as children riding bicycles around a ring and bears wearing skirts dancing with their trainers/abusers. This 1930s style cruelty to animals was not what she had in mind so she put her faith back into Lonely Planet and chose their most highly recommended tour group. Although I had a fun day of diving with Rainbow Divers (a group I would recommend to anyone looking to dive in Vietnam) and saw a few new things (its really hard not to have a great time under the water) I was more than a little jealous that I was not able to experience her day on the boat. Hearing her recount the hours I couldn't help but feel that someone had decided that this stretch of Vietnam's coast was going to be completely trashed as a sacrifice to keep the other stretches undeveloped. Let me paint a picture of her day:-830 start
-Mixed group of 50% Vietnamese and 50% Backpackers
-Welcomed on-board by two cruise directors that mixed promises of beer, fun and the overall itinerary with unexpected transitions into their own renditions of power ballads. eg. "Today we are going to be visiting the aquarium, island X, etc and".......(slowly creeps up behind one of the guests and starts to sing)...."Hello....is it me you're looking for"
-Snorkeling begins with the advice that you "can't touch the coral but you can touch each other!". No fins were provided and the snorkel required you to hold it with your hand (no attachment to the mask). Entering the water the coral was all dead and there were no fish to be seen.
-Boat tied up to a poor fishing village for lunch on board
Po Nagar Cham Tower
. Some education was mixed in with ML's special form of cruise direction by saying "there is no water on the island. It must delivered every day. But....if there was no water they would wash their hands in beer, wash their face in beer, wash their bodies in beer. Beer makes you happy. Beer makes everyone happy. Who wants a beer. Wooohoooo". Side note: Don't worry be happy was blasting at this exact moment. Double bonus: "If anyone gets sick just drink more beer!!!!" was the advice for the patrons. -The two cruise directors had their first costume change and now were in Hawaiian shirts.
-Post-lunch entertainment began with one of the cruise directors and the cooks forming a four piece band. Songs from their repertoire were "Vietnam" and "Mama Linh". They announced themselves as the one of the best boy bands in Vietnam. "You've heard of the Backsteet Boys, The Eagles and N'Sync. Next time we see you we on MTV". What???? The Eagles? God knows where they pulled that from.
-Their own greatest hits were followed by going around the entire boat and singing a song from each country represented on the cruise.
-Immediately following the show everyone was instructed to jump into the water for an "open bar". Cruise directors took to the water in flotation devices wielding buckets rancid wine with pineapples floating in them that could be drunk by the gallons if it tickled the patrons fancy
Fishing Village in Nha Trang
. -An island of fun was the next port of call. Waiting ashore were dead snakes, para-sailing, jet skis and a viciously sharp coral reef that left more than one guest bloody.
-The final stop on the tour was the aquarium, one of the many feature of Vinpearl. The aquarium is in the shape of a pirate ship and Kate could not convince herself to pay the entry fee (even though it was only $1). The friends she had made on the trip came out and declared "I guess fish can't commit suicide".
Please note: This is considered one of the better tours available. Unreal
