"Hilarious" Beach Party!

There's nothing like a nice walk on the beach with the warm ocean breeze, fishing fleet anchored nearby, and the severed rotting head of a dog, teeth bared, neck-bone cleanly chopped through to start a morning (no picture, you're welcome). Judging from the teeth and the skull size, the head had come, a while ago, from a fairly large dog. The only thing we can think of is that it was the victim of the Vietnamese cuisine, which has helped me kick the meat habit for a few days.

Ryan's chin is much better, although I did come up with fun names for him like Smoky Joe! after the bandanna he used to apply ice to his swollen chin. No details are necessary for those reading, but bettering his infection required lancing the wound, and was very gross. Here's ol' Smoky himself during one of our rummy marathons.

Before he got better, I decided to go on a boat trip to the nearby islands in Nha Trang after a girl in our hotel stumbled out of the elevator upon returning and telling us that it was "hilarious"and that she was very drunk. That didn't sound all bad, so I signed up for the 'funky monkey' boat trip. This was definitely not the opportunity to mingle with the locals, though there were a lot of southeast asian tourists onboard (a thai ladyboy hairdresser, a wealthy scantily clad vietnamese couple), but was a great way to see the beautiful waters & islands of Nha Trang. The most memorable moments included a wild 20 minute 'happy hour' on the boat in which the driver clambered over everyone encouraging people to have refills of some gutrot red wine, and could not be persuaded that everyone didn't want refills. The boat crew broke out a fender guitar and a drum set made out of buckets and produced a 10 year old kid to bang on them while they sang such favorites as 'waltzing matilda', 'new york new york' and a vietnam pride song that involved handclapping in between singing 'vietnam vietnam hey!'.

Happy hour over, we were let off on an island for which we immediately had to fork over 10,000 dong (about 80 cents) to even set foot on it, "Vietnamese government!" explained our boat driver. He had used that explanation earlier when, after we jumped in the water for a swim, a guy paddled up in a boat and demanded 5,000 dong 'conservation fee' for the government.

Fellow funky monkey boatpeople and I laid on the beach (to lie on a beach chair cost 50,000 dong) and I decided to swim (hopefully at no additional cost) with a guy from New Zealand. We were only in the water about 5 minutes when we saw a speedboat quickly bearing down on us bringing in some parasailers. We got into shallow water and watched in amazement as the people in the sky crashed in the foliage and on top of a beach bungalow. Whoa. Amazingly, they weren't hurt, and the boatdriver unbelievably found some other thrillseekers to tie in for a hairraising (potentially limb-losing) ride.

I keep thinking of my own litigious society and being amazed at Vietnam. Here, anyone with a boat and desire for cash can take people high in the sky, with no responsibility should something go wrong. Similar to people that will rent a motorbike to anyone, whether they understand its gears, brakes, ignition, or not, or load their own bike about 3 feet high with goods, hoping that things don't fall off and hits people. I know our sue-happy culture has taken things too far sometimes (hot coffee in the crotch? your own damn fault, not mcdonald's), but I am thankful for feeling more safe and with protected rights in the states, without getting hit by a goat from a motorbike.

We are currently in Mui Ne, home of the only desert in Vietnam, and with beautiful red sand dunes that Ryan and I managed to catch at sunset. Beautiful and really bizarre after all the lush tropical scenery.

The government may have something against blogspot, because we haven't been able to view our blog since Ha Noi, but will hopefully be able to keep posting.