Life's a "Beach"

With every new place Seth and I go in Vietnam, I feel hit upside the head with happiness. So far (knock on wood), nobody has scammed us into giving them too much money, everybody has been really friendly and spoken reasonbly good English, the food has been amazing every single time, and the country itself is just gorgeous. It is turning into my new favorite country, and if they could just get rid of that damn humid rainy season with disagreeable levels of heat, I would be able to convince Seth that we need to come back someday and stay here indefinitely. So far there's not much progress in that area though.

I mean, it doesn't suck.

So Vietnam has done nothing but shock us with its wonder and goodness, and Hoi An was no exception. Everyone on the internet and whom we had met previously had already raved about its charm, and after a little exploring upon arrival we realized they were completely right. In Hanoi (and every other city in Asia we've visited, to be honest) we were way too intimidated to rent a bicycle to help ourselves around the city, although it was pretty easily navigable on foot. In Halong Bay, well, bicycles were not an option as we spent the whole time on a ferry or in a kayak or on a beach, but in Hoi An the hostel where we stayed (Nature Homestay -- very nice) offered free bike rental, so we figured why not. It wasn't too crowded and the beach was over 2 miles away. It turned out that since most of the population here gets around by scooter or motorcycle, there's pretty great road etiquette toward bicycles. When we were being passed, people would honk to let us know they were coming and then give us plenty of space. We also knew that, since we were the slowest things on the road, we could count on other vehicles to just zip on by while we went at a leisurely pace on the right-hand side.

We could even take pictures while riding!

The beach was one of the most beautiful I've ever seen. As long as we promised to buy some food from them, any restaurant along the beach would let us park our bikes right outside. The beach was lined with straw umbrellas and lounge chairs, although not too close together, and after enough stretch for people to play, tan and walk, you could see gorgeous crystal-clear blue and then turquoise waters. On the horizon were a few islands, but the sky still stretched forever beyond them. We parked right under some straw umbrellas ($3/day for two lounge chairs and an umbrella) and periodically ordered drinks from the restaurant where we parked our bikes. Every once in a while, people would come by trying to sell us necklaces, sunglasses, newspaper, or chips, but the one I really couldn't resist was the little old woman who sold fruit. It would start with a really high-pitched (almost ET-like) voice behind me going, "Hell-oooooo!" And I would turn around to see a tiny, hunched-over figure with a basket, many layers of clothing to protect herself from the sun, and a Vietnamese straw hat. She got closer and I saw her face resembled ET a little, too! So wrinkly, but still with a twinkle in her eyes and innocent little nose. Unable to tear myself from her adorable Vietnamese old lady spell, I would ask, "how much for rambutan?" (To be explained later) and, continuing her impression of Spielberg's alien, would say, "FOH-TEE." As in, 40,000 dong or $2 for half a kilo of rambutan. SOLD. And then I would pig out for the next half hour before deciding to have a drink and go eat fresh crab with local spices at the beach-front restaurant for $5.

Stoked eating my rambutan

But the craaaaab!!!!

OK. Rambutan (pronounced RAHM-boo-tahn) is a fruit that is round and red, about the size of a ping-pong ball, with soft spikes that taper into green and yellow. You peel away the top layer with your nails as you would a lychee -- it's very easily broken, and under it is a white pulp that surrounds a seed. You eat the sweet, juicy pulp with a satisfying little crunch, and let the tiny bit of juice run down your forearms. You spit out the seed, and repeat! Over and over. I am smitten with rambutan, and it is all over Vietnam. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've described it before but I am always happy to describe rambutan. I'll probably do it again in a future post. Anyway we spent two days mostly just lounging on the beach in Hoi An, eating sea food and rambutan, having a nice cold drink here and there (and lots of water Mom), and reading our books. The sky was completely cloudless and the water was crystal clear. I already miss it and I'm still at the beach :(.

The other thing we did in Hoi An was have some articles of clothing made. Downtown Hoi An was commercial seaport for over 300 years, but about a century ago the harbor was switched to Da Nang, thus preserving the historical part of the city. Since it's pretty close to silk central in Vietnam (the Nam Quang province), tons of silk merchants sold their goods there and what do you do with silk? Why, make clothes! That tradition has been preserved and the historical streets next to the riverbank are lined with tailor shops, where you can go in, choose a design (or submit your own), choose a fabric and have your clothes made! I brought in my favorite dress I got in Seoul that was already a little small when I bought it and is tearing at the seams. The tailor we went to said she could remake it (or "clone"it) for $40 -- and also resize it to fit my body, so I had two made. In retrospect I should have been a little pickier about the material because I walked by other shops with prettier designs, but lesson learned. I have to remember to be picky when I'm in a candy store. I guess being in Hoi An was like being in a completely foreign candy store: you're so excited to try it and you forget to really examine the package, then you realize you bought caramel which you don't even really like that much but what are you going to do, return the caramel after you've eaten half of it? No. You'll just have to eat the caramel and be able to say later that you got some pretty cool caramel from a foreign candy store and shut your mouth about how you should have gotten the dark chocolate. I got another pretty maroon dress made later when Seth had two nice dress shirts made, and that made me feel better but I.... I still wanted more dresses. Seth wouldn't let me. Oh well. I'll have to go shopping at Kohl's with Mom when I get home (right Mom!?! >:).

Gorgeous little street in downtown Hoi An, filled with tailor shops

Oh yeah: a miscellaneous addition to our time in Hoi An: Seth got his beard trimmed for $6. But what he didn't expect was after the beard cleaning, the barber produced a head light and some long instruments. Before we could protest or even realize what was going on, he cleaned out Seth's ears. He used the longest tweezers I've ever seen and pulled out big, healthy chunks of earwax. It was... disconcerting. And what did he do with them? Why, he placed them exactly where they belonged, right on top of Seth's hairy forearm for him to stare at during the rest of the procedure. It was weird.

Not pictured: enormous chunk of ear wax

We ate cao lau, the traditional Hoi An food which includes rice noodles boiled in special water from a certain Hoi An well, topped with pork and soy sauce, bean sprouts and croutons. We found some pretty great happy hour specials next to the riverbank, and paid $2.50 for a half hour canoe ride (pushed by another ET-inspired woman with arms of steel) down the softly lantern-lit river at nighttime. There are no cars or mopeds allowed near the riverbank at certain areas, and very few neon lights, preserving the old-timey feel and making it all the more peaceful, accompanied by dinner boats with live acoustic music and low stone bridges. What a dream. We have to go back to Hoi An. I'll make sure to give fair warning so anyone who wants to join me can!! :)

Another cool Hoi An restaurant

Ok so after two nights and two days in Hoi An, we took the night bus twelve hours south to Nha Trang, where we got to the Rainbow Divers bar and took a shuttle two hours back north from there. A boat picked us up and took us to Whale Island, where we spent the first afternoon on a 2-hour hike around the island. We saw dragon fruit trees, tons of butterflies floated in the air around us right out of Snow White, we walked through mangroves and fought through the spiderwebs that came with them, and took success pictures on top of a cliff overlooking the bay.

He doesn't seem to hate it.

I was disappointed not to be able to find the mango trees we had been promised at reception, but they're probably not in season and what does a mango tree look like anyway? I'm thinking nobody knows. But anyway, the whole reason we were to spend three (expensive) nights at Whale Island was to learn how to scuba dive! We had already taken the online theory (a 10-hour endeavor) before we left Korea, so the first night we reviewed it a little after having met our scuba instructor, a 22-year-old Frenchman from ... not France. Where then, you ask? Tahiti. He is from Tahiti. He's 22, has been scuba-diving for 8 years, and lives on a secluded island off the coast of Vietnam with gorgeous landscapes and crystal blue waters and he grew up in FRENCH POLYNESIA. What a cool life.

Haha! This is not the real world.

Anyway he spoke very good English and was very kind when I scored an 84% on my scuba theory review test (not my proudest academic achievement). We feasted that night on tomato and sausage soup, marinated strips of beef covered with peanuts, grilled shrimp, a green papaya salad, rice and pineapple cake for dessert. We had an option to pay $28/person per day for lunch and dinner, or go hungry because there were literally no other companies or restaurants on the island or a 15-minute boat ride to shore for that matter. So we coughed up the cash and that my friends, plus the cost of the scuba course and hotel, will be three of the most expensive days I have ever spent (with my own money at least) but also some of the best.

Some views from the bungalow

Sunset from the bungalow 🔻

General Whale Island view

The scuba course was so cool. I don't know what has always drawn me to the idea of breathing condensed air under water for an extended period of time, but it was exactly as great as I thought it would be and a million times better than any aquarium I've ever been to. We saw puffer fish, a tiny white sea slug, an eel, LOTS of sea urchins (Seth got stung -- TWICE), stunning coral and grouper, and lots of other stuff I don't know the names of. Our Tahitian guide showed us a "star feather" which looks like a plant but when you touch its little branches, it grabs on to your finger. We found a little family of clownfish living in an isolated anemone at around 8 meters (24 feet) below sea level and the anemone did the same things to our fingers. The clownfish were funny -- they seemed really curious about us and swam around our fingers and right up to our noses if we stayed still (which was hard). I was actually kinda sad to swim away from them.

Real scuba divers!

Not only did Seth get stung by two sea urchins (he's OK now), but after the first dive an oxygen tank landed on his toe. Little known fact: although oxygen tanks are made of aluminum and filled with nitrogen and oxygen, they're 17kg, or about 40lbs. Seth's toe was not the prettiest it's ever been, but it wasn't broken. He might be losing a nail soon, but so far it's hanging on and his toe isn't quite as purple as it was yesterday. Anyway. Watch out for scuba cylinders. 

Scuba, in case you didn't know, is one of my favorite acronyms: Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. It turns out, this requires a lot of patience. It's not like holding your breath and going down under the water and just using your limbs to get everywhere you want. You have to use your breath to "hover": breathe in to go up and out to go down, but the effect is pretty delayed and it's hard to know if your breath has done anything until about three seconds after you've started the inhalation or exhalation. There's a chance it hasn't done anything, if you don't have enough air in your BCD or "buoyancy control device" which is a vest into which you inflate air from your oxygen tank. If there's not enough, you'll just sit at the bottom. If there's too much, you can go up too fast and risk lung overexpansion, which is bad and potentially fatal. So you have to be really careful and not press the wrong button, which I did once but I'm OK! Anyway I love the BCD because once you get to the surface, you can just inflate it and hang out. There's no energy whatsoever involved in keeping yourself afloat, and I'm all for not using energy. You need to deflate it to go down, but in order not to fall directly onto coral or a sea urchin after a few meters, you need to pump a little bit of air back into it. Seth and I both needed at least another ten pounds of lead weight on our weight belt to be able to control our buoyancy underwater and not fly back up once we added a tiny bit of air to the BCD, which was a bit of a pain at first but eventually we got the hang of it. We learned how to handle emergency situations, like if one of us runs out of air or the equipment malfunctions. I learned that as long as I'm diving with Seth, I will never run out of air because he will first. He's a big guy and uses air almost twice as fast as I do, so if he ever gets really low it will be easy to share and ascend. At one point, our instructor wanted to show us what it would feel like to run out of air so he closed our oxygen tanks for one second. When he was doing the demonstration on himself beforeand, however, he had trouble opening it again! That was a little scary. I gave him my alternate air source until he finally got it. 

Look at me! Sounding all technical. I'm not sure how many opportunities I'll have to dive again after this trip, but I hope I can do it a few times per year. It will be hard to top the first few trips we've ever done though, off the coast of Vietnam.

So this morning after our last dive we took a boat and a shuttle back to Nha Trang, which is apparently Russia Central of Vietnam -- on every store and restaurant there are signs in English, Vietnamese AND Russian, which is a first as far as I've seen here. Also, there is fruit --including mangoes >:( -- on every street corner. So after writing about rambutan I went out and bought some more for dinner because well, YOLO. If anyone wants to put in a request at the Knoxville area and Charlotte area grocery stores for this succulent little piece of Southeast Asia, I will reward you with a ... piece of dark chocolate from a foreign candy store :).

Till next time!