I woke up to my mom asking me where the camera was at 500. The sunrise looked really nice outside, and she wanted to take some pictures. It did look quite beautiful over the ocean with a nice orange color, and for once, she actually took a decent picture of it. You can see it in the collage picture.
This was a pretty massive day filled with lots of events. The entire family gathered in the lobby at 630 sharp, and we walked into the bus to head to Doc Let Resort. I’m still amazed at how a group of 21 people, half of the percentage being children, and some percentage senior citizens can wake up and be ready by a certain time without being late. It may be part discipline with my family, but it’s also due to the fact that many of them wake up early by default. Most of them wake up at around 530 to 600 normally, and have breakfast at around 700. Lunchtime is 1030 to 1100. So the schedules for them are a back a few hours compared to us. When it comes to events here, we’re generally the ones who they have to wait on, but it’s just a couple of minutes.
The Doc Let Resort was another substantial three hour drive, hence the early startup. The resort was equipped with several tennis courts, renting services, swimming pools. The Doc Let Beach also was claimed to be one of the best in the nearby area, and when we arrived we headed straight there. It was quite a nice place, and there weren’t too many people there as usual since it was fairly early in the morning. The pathways were lined with palm trees and large huts. We rented out a hut, changed into our swimsuits, and quickly ran to the water. The weather was perfect at that time, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The beach area we played at was empty, and so we had complete access over it. The sand was a lot smoother and cleaner (and hotter) than the sand from the other two beaches, and the water was the clearest of them all. The water at this beach probably rivaled that of the beach I went to in the Bahamas. It was a nice aqua blue color, and the water was as clear as that of a regular chlorine pool. In fact, I could actually see small schools of fish swim away from me on occasion. I had goggles on, and swam underwater to explore the ocean floor, but when water leaked in and entered my eyes, the sting wasn’t bad at all.
I discovered that a lot of people couldn’t actually swim, particularly the women, but it wasn’t too much of a problem since the water was shallow. This beach was interesting too since you could actually go quite a distance before actually reaching deep water. In addition, the children who couldn’t swim had flotation devices, and they paddled their way around. We enjoyed the water for about an hour and a half, and then headed inside to eat lunch.
There were actually two areas to the Doc Let Resort that you could rent. You could either rent out an umbrella and beach chair in a specific area for a cheap amount, or you could rent a large hut in another area with several chairs and table for a bit more. There was just one big distinction between the areas. Think about it in an advertising standpoint: with or without ads. Yup, that meant either dealing with the feisty vendors who shove their products in your face, or nothing. We chose the latter, but unfortunately for lunch, we had to enter that “ad-filled” area to eat. As we ate, the pesky vendors slowly surrounded us, and continuously asked us questions like, “Would you like a drink with that?” or “Have enough rice to eat? I also sell bun bo hue!” The topic of conversation also progressively steered over to discussing my back as well. Due to the saltwater, my back was a bright red and filled with small dots and lumps throughout, and the vendors questioned if I got bit by insects or something. I forgot about how perceptive and nosy Vietnamese people can be. Family over here don’t really gossip too much, unlike some people (by that I’m slightly hinting at a particular senior citizen who likes to gossip about people hehe).
Did I mention my showering and bathroom experiences over here? I think I mentioned the showering part. I’ve definitely had my fair share of bad restrooms and areas here. Places with showers that barely run any water, filled with mosquitoes. Or restrooms that definitely don’t pass sanitary regulations, with the overwhelming smell of urinal tablets and other fecal matter, mold, rust, cracked tiles, holes on the ground instead of toilets, toilet paper soaked with water, no toilet paper, flies, etc., etc. It’s a wonder that I was even able to use the restroom every couple of days, and not kneel over from some septic poisoning or kidney stone or whatnot due to my body saying, “Ain’t nobody got time for dat” to unclean and unsafe restrooms. I digress.
How did I go from lunch to restrooms? Oh yes. After lunch, we showered up, and headed back into the bus to head back to Nha Trang. That was only half of the day, but the best was yet to come. Our second major event was to Nha Trang’s largest attraction, the VinPearl Amusement Park. With a large waterpark, an all-free arcade, 4D cinema theater, rollercoaster rides, aquarium, various shows, and more, the park itself was situated on its own island. In order to get there, we had to take a ski tram-like system, which was pretty cool. Luckily, the amusement park was only a fifteen minute drive away, so we didn’t have to wait long.
Unlike the High Finance Ski Tram system in Albuquerque, this system was continuously running, and constantly had three to four trams ready in the terminal. The trams fit about eight people total, and moved fairly quickly. I got onto a tram with some of my cousins, and they yelped in fear when the tram started accelerating to its destination. The view was awesome up there, as the tram went up over a major body of water, showing their entire Nha Trang area to us. There were tall skyscrapers in the distance, and small houses and boats below. Definitely a view that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. Despite the tram being decently quick, the trip to the island ended up to be about ten minutes long. Throughout the entire duration, I snapped a lot of photos of the scenery and of my cousins siting over the nice view. As we neared our final destination, the amusement park came into view, equipped with rollercoasters, rides, and people. Luckily, the population within the park didn’t seem too bad, as it wasn’t as crowded as places like Disneyland or anything. I guess that’s an advantage for having a park located on a remote island, as with only a tram or ferry system for transportation, the flow of people entering the park is slower. We reached the end of the tram, hopped off, and waited for the rest of the family to arrive.
It was quite a big amusement park indeed, and we didn’t even have enough time to explore all of it. By the time we arrived it was nearly 1500, so we only had six hours to look and play around before closing. To begin, we started with a family group picture in front of the VinPearl entrance. It had a nice background, with a green mountain behind us, and large letters spelled out “Vinpearl” on the mountain. Then, we quickly went to the waterpark. The waterpark closed at 1800, so we decided to visit it first. Much of the park looked like any regular amusement park, with a whole line of stores down certain pathways, and little souvenir shops to buy random things. There were also lots of places to eat, but they seemed to be only fast food, and by fast food I mean American. Interesting. The waterpark was fairly crowded at the entrance when we arrived. The people who weren’t swimming (most of the adults and kids who couldn’t swim) found a shaded bench and put all of the belongings down, while the people swimming ran into the shower rooms to get changed. As I entered the shower room, I once again heard a mixture of both Vietnamese and Russian being spoken, as people showered and changed in the vast hallway of stalls. After changing, we proceeded to the waterslides.
Holding foam boards to slide on, we went up the stairs to the colorful six-lane waterslide, which was a progressive slope to the bottom. One of my cousins Titi (I don’t know how to spell her name), who can’t swim, mustered up the courage to come with us, seeing that the bottom of the slide didn’t have too much water. The stairs were very poorly engineered, as instead of having flat concrete ground for us to walk on, it was created with a gridded steel. The stairs left an imprint on our bare feet, and it was almost like walking on those stone massage rugs. Unfortunately, when we made it to the top, we were greeted by a worker, who stated that two of my cousins couldn’t come on the slide because they were wearing jeans. They were actually wearing shorts with jean material, and I guess that wasn’t allowed, despite the fact that we were using boards to slide on. One of my cousins had a swimsuit under her shorts, so she was fine, but my second cousin had no alternative. My sister Lien went and saved the day though when she offered her own shorts, since she too had a swimsuit underneath. We brought her over to a corner, and covered her with the sliding boards as she quickly changed into Lien’s shorts. Quite the workaround I suppose.
The slide was real fun, as the slope got increasingly longer the more we descended to the bottom. We ended up going on the slide a second time before taking a break and heading into the lazy river. I forgot to mention that the group I was with consisted of my sister, and my three cousins, Nokia (again his nickname, and he was the only boy besides me), Phuong Hoang (Nhi), Titi, and Cam Hong. In the lazy river we created a massive chain “motorboat” in the water using the tire floats. We all laughed as we floated down the river, and pretty much blocked anyone from going past us due to our chain’s size. The river didn’t wrap around in a circle, and after about ten minutes of floating we exited at the end. We then picked up some more tire floats, and made our way to the wave pool. We attempted to make a chain again by holding hands in the pool, but the waves were too strong for us to continue after a couple minutes. The chain was also difficult to maintain since there were many people in the area, and we didn’t want to hit anyone. My cousin Titi screamed as the waves nearly made her flip over, and she clutched onto the tire float for dear life. We kept a close eye on her so that nothing happened. Dad found us after a bit, and recorded us splashing around in the waves with his underwater action camera.
To complete our waterpark experience, and there were many other rides we didn’t go on, we decided to go down another waterslide that had a steep slope to it. The slope then went back up, and made almost a ramp over the top. Unfortunately, we were unable to go on the slide because our cumulative weight was not enough for the slide. We instead went on the slide next to it, which was a constant slant downwards. The slide was extremely fast, but since the slide was a two-seater, it didn’t seem so bad at all. By the time we finished, the waterpark was beginning to close, and we quickly changed out of our swimsuits to meet with our family, and proceed to the next destination.
We stopped by a fast food café since all of us were hungry, and looked at a massive isgn that had all of the entrees. I went and decided to try the ol’ hamburger with fries, just to see how it differentiated with America. While I waited for the food to come, I took pictures of the beautiful landscape that the café was next to. The eating area was right beside the large ocean-like body of water, and you could see the tramline going across to Nha Trang. My cousins joined me on my picture taking, and took selfies along the view. I’m friends with some of them on Facebook by the way.
At last, the food arrived, and my uncle seemed frustrated. He told us that the sign we looked at to buy food actually had the old prices, and the new ones were much more expensive. He scolded the workers there for not having a sign that was correct, and it seemed to have spread to the nearby people, who also got angry at the employees. He was able to lower the price down a bit, and also got free drinks for all of us. In Vietnam, you can bargain on almost any item, and have the price lowered a bit to make it more reasonable. Exceptions only go to actual shopping stores like Walgreens/mall equivalents, or when vendors specifically say they have a fixed price. Even then you can still try to bargain though.
As I suspected, the hamburger was not really a true hamburger. Imagine soy-sauce seasoned meatloaf that’s slightly grilled placed into a bun. That’s essentially what it is. I suppose the French fries were fine, as you really can’t mess up French fries.
After dinner, we made our way to a large amphitheater to catch a light show. The theater was extremely large, and looked to fit at least a thousand people. When the show started, we were greeted by a projected cartoon on the screen, who spoke of Vietnam’s great accomplishments and ability to thrive and succeed in the world. To be honest, it sounded like this North Korean narrator that I listened to in a documentary. The cartoon had a strange English accent. The show was accompanied by large illuminated spouts of water that spewed in an eloquent sequence. About a minute into the show, fire shot from the stage, followed by a massive roar from the crowd. I readied myself for an intense show, but I was wrong. The next fifteen minutes were filled with the same shenanigans, and it started to actually get old. To make it worse, the songs that the fountains synced to were old time patriotic Russian songs, like Dmitri’s Dream or Romanov’s Symphony No. 5 (or something). It was just a repetitive show overall, and we decided to leave early, along with many others who followed.
For the rest of the night we toured the attractions of the park, and rode on as many rides as we could. Some of the adults went on the bumper car ride, and we had a lot of fun smashing into each other. We also went to a typical 4D cinema, and everyone had fun experiencing the water, wind, and special effects. Despite not being able to go on the fabled Alpine Coaster, which was a massive rollercoaster that required manual steering, as well as probably 50% of the rest of the park, I still had a lot of fun with the family. They definitely had an awesome time as well.
We left the amusement park at 2130, and the line to take the tram down had shrunk. When we came by around two hours earlier, hundreds of people were present at the line. The support beams of the tram, modeling the appearance of Eiffel Towers, illuminated in a bright white in the dark, and looked quite nice on the way back. Besides that, the water and land below us was a pitch black, and I sat quietly and relaxed in a dim light as we returned to the Nha Trang area.
Upon arriving at the hotel, I said my goodbyes to the family, and quickly headed up to the room to lie down. About an hour later, two of my cousins entered, and gave me some snacks to eat. The night ended with me munching on choco-pies and shrimp chips while watching Star Trek: Into the Darkness…
This was probably the most eventful day of all, and tomorrow we would be leaving Nha Trang, and heading back to Ho Chi Minh City on a strenuous 15-hour drive. Although I only stayed a few nights in Nha Trang, I had a great time, and wouldn’t mind coming back to explore some more. Vietnam really changed in my mind, and what I originally imagined was not like what was present in reality. Although the country lacks the cleanliness of Japan or Singapore, or the technological prowess of South Korea, there’s a certain culture and style to Vietnam that you can never find in the States or anywhere else for that matter. It’s a place that truly shows the colors and life of Asia, and we haven’t even explored it all. Well, that’s all for Day 13. I apologize for the late posts, and I will try to get them done in a timely manner. Live long and prosper, connect the dots, and until next time.
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