Still In Nha Trang - Vietnam

Well yes I am still alive, sorry for the delay in updating. I have had long, long days with the diving course. Usually 12 hours and then I have to come back to the hotel and do chapter work. I have been bagged. Well, after a long few days and six or seven dives, class work and the exam. I am now PADI open water certified. It was a great course and my instructor (Russell or Rusty) was very thorough.

We did a session in an Olympic size pool, 2/3 of the way full with water, half ass as usually here, they said. It is the navy's pool but they have never seen any navy in it.

The visibility was 8 – 10 m in the ocean. It is usually a lot better but it has been raining off and on. I think I will go again in the next day or two as it has not rained in a few days and I should be able to see more. We saw great big star blue and purple star fish, clown fish (Nemo), damsel fish and really nice large coral. It was better then my last dive in the Great Barrier Reef. Surprisingly there is a lot of coral life here, but I did not see many schools of fish.

I have finally got to chill out at the beach. I was told of this place that rents lounge chairs and has a pool and restaurant. It is not a resort but instead of lying on the sand for $1.50 you can rent a chair for the day and either lay on the beach or by the pool, or switch between the two. You are not harassed there, by the “want to buy, you like.” It is the place to hang out and they will bring you food and drinks, ice cream etc from the restaurant. It is a brew pub, run by an Aussie. When you look around it is hard to believe it is still Vietnam. This town has a little bit better know how on tourism.

There are many hotels going up and I am sure in 5 – 10 years it will be so different. In the South you can notice the American/Westerner influence, remnants of the war, more than in the north.

As usual I have been meeting lots of great people. A lot of Aussie couples, they are great for conversation.

Went out the other evening with my diving instructor and some of the dive masters. We went to a few high class bars and it was interesting to just people watch. There were Vietnamese gay men, “women of the night” and straight people. It was my first exposure to the ladies and that is interesting too. I had read about it, but once you see it, well.

You notice the inner racial couples in this town and you cann’t help but wonder about them. Unfortunately there are a lot of dirty old men with young Vietnamese women and unfortunately there are a lot of pedophiles. There is a woman (Vietnamese – Canadian) that has a campaign, hands off the kids. She works to reduce kids in the sex trade and runs a bar, spa (the one I went to the other day) and school. She offers free English classes to street kids and uses the money from her bar and spa to support her efforts. I volunteered today at the school teaching English. They have volunteer teachers who do 4 week or more stints and then travelers are welcome to stop in at their convenience and offer help. It was interesting, a lot of chaos in the room, organized chaos I guess. I worked with the ones that were not interested at all and unfocused. I had Canada pins in my pocket so we used them as counters and practiced counting. The one boy was really young and not doing any of the work the others were, but when I used the pins with him, he knew his numbers to 6 and we worked up to 12. They do an hour of schooling a day and come when they can. Some just once a week. It is a drop in center.

I had to laugh coming back from my class the other night. There was a women walking down the road pushing a large scale on a stand to check your weight. Why they have them? Who would want to check their weight? They had them in Hanoi too. They are crazy. I cann't think that person is making money. They are constantly trying to peddle something. Terry would like it. You sit at the restaurant and they bring the books to you. "Want to buy, good book". All pirated photocopies of books for cheap and they look real.

There is an arts and craft historical building beside my hotel. It is a lovely set up. They have a guitarist and harp players in the courtyard and mist spraying in those areas. It is relaxing and you can sit down and have a free tea. Inside the buildings are pictures for sale. They are stunning. The pictures, look like paintings but are embroidered with silk. It takes them over six months to do a picture. They truly are stunning. The detail in some of the pictures was amazing. They had an old Vietnamese man’s face and it had every detail. They also have lovely landscape pictures. It truly was spectacular and to think it is all done my hand.

Enjoying now the rest full days of lounging at the beach and reading my book after a month of go, go, see this, check this out.

This afternoon I went to the mud baths and mineral springs. It was an interesting set up. They have many small hot tub size marble tubs that they fill with mud and you lay in them for 20 minutes. Mud makes you very buoyant it was neat to float in it. It is suppose to be good for the skin. My skin does feel softer. Then you go to the mineral shower where hundreds of jets spray mineral water on you from nice granite rocks. Then you go to another tub and they fill it with hot mineral water and you relax in it. An afternoon’s entertainment for a little over $3. They also have hot large pools then that you can swim in and they are 38 degrees, they were too hot.