Vietnam: Nha Trang Day 2

We had to be up and ready to leave by 0900, not too bad, especially after the early mornings and late nights of Japan and China.  We got up around 0800 and went down for breakfast.  More spaghetti.  Today we were heading out on 2 boats to explore the uninhabited islands on the outskirts of the bay after going to the Oceanographic Institute.  I forget the name of the bay.The Oceanographic Institute could hardly be called such after coming from Hawaii and Japan and witnessing aquariums and different institutions.  We walked around and saw animals in small, dirty tanks with no substrate, blue walls, and nothing else in it except for themselves and maybe another animal.  The bigger pools with sharks and other fish weren’t as bad, but some of the sharks were malnourished.  A few were pretty healthy.  There was a white tip reef shark and a few rays.Most of the fish were way too big for their tanks.  One of the bigger tanks had 3 huge eels in it.  Most of the animals had no where to swim in their tanks and it was so sad.  I wanted to free them all.  But these fish looked healthy.  We were later told that this Oceanographic Institute has enough access to these species to keep replacing them so when people see them they are seeing new and healthy fish in the exhibit.  How sad is that?One of the bigger pools we saw had a ton of big sea turtles.  There were at least 8 in it.  It was way overcrowded for their size and there was nothing in the white tank.  I was looking at it and I notice something sticking out of the water, so I walk around to the other side.  Amidst all the sea turtles was a baby seal with its head popped out of the water.  WHAAAAAT.  It looked sad.  I felt so badly for it, it had no other seals to play with.  I wanted to steal it and take it somewhere to play.After all of the live exhibits, we were led into a building that contained rows upon rows of shelves of jarred preserved specimens.  It was creepy.  They had everything in there.  The leader of the trip was Professor Abel, my marine bio and biology of sharks teacher.  He had a field day in here.  We lost him in here for awhile and he was the last back to the bus by a fairly significant amount.  Inside here was also a full dugong that was preserved.  It was creepy and kind of disgusting.  There was a dried out sawfish, too.  Also, there was an entire skeleton of a whale in the center of a room and a dried out manta ray on the wall and a dugong skeleton.  It was such a strange place.  I was kind of glad to get out of there and back on the bus to head out to the bay.We rented snorkel gear from the local women for the equivalent of $1 USD.  Needless to say, they were pretty shitty.  You get what you pay for.The boat took us out about 45 minutes through the bay to drift at one of the islands.  No anchoring necessary, we rafted with the other boat.  We had the whole day to lay out there and swim and drink.  They provided us with beer and water.  Also, on the boat were a few local women charging very little for manicures or pedicures or massages.Thinking we’d just relax and lay out on the top of the boat as soon as we got there, we were ordered by our tour guide, Liam, to get up on top and jump off into the water.  We all listened, a little reserved at first.  He had all of us jump off and then get back out and do it again.  He was so full of energy.  He had us all hold hands and jump together and then we counted off and jumped one after another.  It was so much fun.  And it was so hot and sunny that the water felt great, it wasn’t that cold.The whole time we were there, Liam kept trying to get everyone shot gun together.  Apparently last year the SAS kids were with him and taught him how to shot gun.  So he demanded that people do it with him.  A few of the boys finally agreed and went up to the top of the boat.  Liam wasn’t very good at it, but he was crazy and was jumping around, took his, and immediately yelped and jumped into the water.I spent $10 USD for a half hour massage.  And for any of you that actually know me, you know how much I love massages.  Best $10 I’ve spent in awhile.  I literally just laid out on the benches of the boat.  Now that is the life I want to live.We tried snorkeling but the gear was crappy and there wasn’t much to see right next to this rocky island.  The coral was pretty decent and alive, but there were very few fish and the ones we saw were tiny.  Recently there’s been a few shark attacks in Nha Trang and they caught a one ton great white, but we were unable to see any sharks.  Our tour guide even refused to talk about it for fear we wouldn’t go in the water and that it would ultimately hurt the tourism in this area.  It’s a very international tourist destination.  For such a small area, you’ll find it on most world maps, which is pretty cool.  But he really should have told us more about the sharks because Professor Abel and a few other people were really interested about them.  The attack was most likely done by a sand tiger.We all got fried from being out in the sun for so long.  We put on sun block originally, but with so much swimming and being in and out of the water it came off and we mostly just forgot to put any back on.Most of the day was spent lounging around and playing in the water.  Eventually we all got hungry around 1400 and they took us by boat to another island.  We got another beautiful boat ride through the bay to an island with jet skis and lots of people out front.  Again, the meal was mostly seafood.  I got a few things of chicken and noodles and was satisfied.  By this point everyone was starting to fade from being in the sun and partying hard the night before.We had a few hours on this island after lunch.  There were hammock like chairs under thatched roofs right along the water.  Everyone sat on these and most people crashed.  We hung out for a while and one of the boys took a jet ski out.  He said it didn’t go to fast and wasn’t worth the money, it was so old and worn out.  No one else bothered to try.  I took a half hour nap and was feeling pretty good after it.Around 1700 we were rounded up by our tour guide to get back on the boat and head back to Nha Trang.  The boat ride this time was much quicker and we were back in no time.  We gave back our snorkel gear and headed back to the hotel.  Ally, Mischa, Brittany, and I spotted an ice cream place right next to our hotel.  We all got chocolate ice cream in cones.  We’d been craving this all trip.  We were disappointed to find it barely tasted like chocolate and tasted more of coconut.  Fails on the food front again.  Nothing is really Americanized enough here to be worth it.Ally and I showered quickly and started watching a movie on HBO in English.  There were surprisingly a lot of channels in English.  We started watching The Express and got about 45 minutes in before we had to leave for dinner.  This movie was so good, we were dying to watch more of it, but we had to go to dinner and if we didn’t go we’d have to fend for ourselves.  Probably not worth it.Dinner was down the road and seafood for the millionth time.  We were all a little sick of the food by this point.  I was all for Vietnamese food, I’ve had it a few times back home and have liked it.  This was different.  The restaurant was really pretty and was outside.  We had the upstairs and it was lit all romantically and everything.They told us there was a chicken noodle soup, it was more like egg drop soup.  I like egg drop soup.  But by chicken, they meant shrimp.  On all the menus it said chicken.  This was a fail.  They gave us other things that they claimed to be chicken, not chicken.  The only chicken they gave us was undercooked.  One of the boys can’t eat shellfish, and everything was shrimp, so he couldn’t eat anything at dinner.  Oh, and we ordered smoothies at the beginning from their menu.  They brought the wrong ones out.  This restaurant was really not doing well.  They didn’t seem to like us much either.  Oh well.I found my food soul mate.  He puts ketchup on literally everything, doesn’t eat seafood, loves pasta and believes ketchup is needed on it, and loves burritos.  All of my friends on the ship laugh at me for putting ketchup on anything and everything at our meals.We all decided we’d just struggle through and then get some pizza at a place down the street after dinner since we were all starving.  Eric, John, Ally, and I got some pizza at Olivia’s.  We got a margherita pizza and some garlic bread.  We’d been craving fruit drinks for this entire trip; think about being in the heat on the beach and what you’d want.  This place had strawberry daiquiris on the menu, this sounded perfect.  They actually tasted like cough syrup and were that consistency.  They were served in martini glasses, too.  Oh well.  At least the pizza and garlic bread were delicious.After our second dinner, or first real dinner, we headed back to the Sailing Club.  The boys had reserved two tables the night before.  Everyone was going to show up tonight. Brittany, Emily, Kate, and a bunch of the boys had already gotten there.  Brittany bought us all drinks.  We had mudslides, they were sooooo unbelievably good.We started out with some Grey Goose and JD again.  We found out that the boys dropped about $600 USD each night on this place.  WOW.  The waiters there loved us.  You would think they’d hate a bunch of obnoxious American kids.  But we brought them so much business and really weren’t that badly behaved.One of the managers came out and greeted us and laughed at us from the night before.  He said he was disappointed to find we weren’t there when he got back after a break at 0500.  The boys then sounded like the Hangover and said, “When did we leave here?”  He laughed some more at us and brought the other waiters over to tell the boys about the end of their night.  Most of us had been long gone by this point.They brought us some champagne and told us they’d bring more out later for free.  Awesome.  We toasted to our tour guide and Nam and everything you can imagine.  In Vietnam when you toast you all yell “YO.”  Which, needless to say, we’d done about 10 times the night before.We mixed some drinks up.  We were much quieter than the night before, as was the bar itself since it was a Sunday night.  There had been tons of people there the night before.  Tonight it was more low key.  One of the waiters seemed disappointed to see how tame we were, as we hadn’t been drinking all day today.  This is why they gave us free champagne; they wanted us to buy more.We basically owned this place.  Pierce decided we needed to take flaming Sambucca shots.  And by we I mean Brittany and I and maybe one other guy.  It actually wasn’t that bad.  A few of the boys had taken them the night before.  It tasted like warm licorice, not like the Brandy we had in China.We met a ton of people here, all of them foreign.  A bunch of 20 something aged guys from England, Norway, and Sweden.  They were all really nice and seemed pretty stoked to join in on our party of 20 people since the bar was dead aside from us at this point.The bar actually ran out of champagne for us and we were given really nice wine instead.  Not bad.  Then we ordered some more pizza.  It was so good.  Honestly, nothing compares to pizza.We played down by the water for awhile and took some pictures.  Definitely not as epic as the night before.  Thank God for that.  But it made me glad I’d decided to go out both nights.  Overall it was a great night.  We all walked back together around 0200.  We were going to go and swim in the hotel pool, but once we got upstairs we realized how tired we were.