sd’s world tour

February 10

Another wonderful, relaxing day at our tropical paradise.  Most of the day was spent doing things so boring that they don’t merit discussion.  So here is a list: eating, light shopping, lounging, light swimming, more eating, trying and failing to sun actually without getting sun (I was the big burn victim of the day — my breasts were done/dun.)  There are a few things of note:

I got up to watch the sunrise over the gulf, of which I took way too many pictures.  We have never really gotten into the hours here and have been going to bed as early as 7:45 (though that when it was really cold and the bed was the warmest place).  We have been getting better — 9:45 last night!  But we are still early to bed and earlier to rise.  Hence the sunrise.  [Interestingly, the same thing happened to both Maura and I when we came back to the States.  I have been losing my ability to function at about 8pm, but I wake up at 5:30 like it's noon.]

There is a very noticeable tide here on the island.  At low tide, the water is probably 200 yards from the beach.  When the water recedes, it leaves a plain of sand a small ponds.  It made (I hope) for some good pictures because the sun reflected off the wet sand and shallow water.  I also watched a snail eat a muscle which was one of the weirdest things I have every seen. 

Our big activity for the day was snorkeling.  I done it once before in Hawaii at Megan’s wedding and, though amazing, the conditions weren’t optimal.  Lots of wave crashing me into coral and people everywhere.  Here, we were in a smooth bay with only our two tour companions, Mark and Eleanor, an older couple from Scotland.  (More friends for us to add to our list!  That makes 5 more friends that I ever made traveling.)  At one point, Mark apologized that they weren’t big strapping young men.  Besides the obvious fat that Derek would be much happier with us going about with Mark and Eleanor, I haven’t liked the looks of the young “eligible” male travellers.  For some reason, they are either overly deep guys with big, bushy brown hair and beards or skeevy, muscle-shirted Brits with too much gel and Drakkar Noir.

Anywhose, to the fish.  I’ll spare everyone my raptures about the general amazingness of it all and the overwhelming awe-inspiring power of nature.  We all know I do quippy better than deep thoughts.  Suffice it to say that it was beautiful.  Here are my three favorite parts:

One of the first things that struck me were these beautiful, brilliant purple plants growing on the coral.  The looked like, well, certain Georgia O’Keefe paintings.  I kept starting in wonder at them sway in the ocean current when a fish swam up near it and (schluuup) the plant disappeared into the rock.  Wha?  Turns out they are giant (giant!) clams that live in the coral reef.  [The picture is not mine.  More's the pity.]  They came in an array of colors: green specked, brown with purple specks, rose with brown specks.  My favorite was the purple on purple guys. 

Another fun thing was the clown fish.  Just like Nemo, they swim in and around the sea anemone like they are playing hide and seek.  In fact, Finding Nemo must have peaked the interest of many a snorkeling tourist because our tour guides keep pointing them out.  Well played.  It worked.  I guess it also interests aquarium owners because, according to a flyer our resort put in our rooms, they have been over fished since the movie came out.  Our resort was overseeing the release of hundreds of clown fish by guests of the resort who were scuba diving on the 14th.  Which is neat. 

Then there was my friend the flat purple fish.  He had a yellow racing stripe down its back and a black and white tail with iridescent dorsal fins (umm, maybe — are those the ones on the bottom?  Fish expert Megan, please advise.)  [It may or may not have been a purple tang like the one pictured (again not mine) but it gives you the idea].  This guy had . . .let’s call it bravado.  He chased away two entire schools of fish, even though they were his size, so he could snack on a bit of coral in solitude.  Unfortunately, a bigger purple fish came along and my guy had to swim above him waiting until Mr. Big was done nibbling.  Mr. Big went away shortly, and my guy was back at it. 

Last thing: As I was being inspired by the beauty of nature, I noticed that a huge chunk of the sea floor below me was covered with a large fishing net.  One the one hand, it was remarkable because the net had become part of the habitat, with fishing living and feeding in and around it.  One the other hand, here was evidence of man’s destructive effect on the environment out here in this secluded outpost.  Okay, done.

After more lounging, eating, plus drinking a beer at the pool’s swim up bar (which Maura said I was more excited about than anything in Vietnam), we did another yoga class.  As one is supposed to, I improved today over yesterday.  Unfortunately, the yoga did not see my slow but steady improvement.  Yes, I am bad at yoga.  I have neither strength nor flexibility, what are kinda key.  No, I cannot pull myself into a back bend or hold the first part of the cobra pose [pictured] for 30 seconds.  But I do all right.  But the yoga lady kept laughing at me.  I am pretty sure that’s not in the Yogi Handbook.  E.g., I was holding myself in the boat pose and was making a concentratey, this is hard, face.  [Picture to the left is clearly not me.]  Cause that shit is hard.  I was doing just like Rodney Yee told me to do in my video, relaxing the corner of my eyes and everything.  But the instructor looked at me and pointed and laughed.  At the end of the session she looked at me again, laughed again, and wagged her finger at me as if to tell me never to do yoga again.  So yeah, I won’t be doing any more free yoga at the resort any time soon.  I’m pretty sure good yoga instructors aren’t supposed to make you cry. 

February 9

Today we arrived at Phi Phi Island off the southwest cost of Thailand.  It is paradise.  We are staying at the Phi Phi Island Village Resort, which is super-paradise.  We arrived at the island via an hour and a half  speedboat ride from Phuket.  We were met at the beach by the staff who gave us cool towels and cold frothy drinks while we waited to check in.  The “rooms” are actually like bungalows in a traditional Thai style — on stilts with thatched pointy roofs.  (Again, I assume they are traditional, or at least faux-traditional.  Like many things, I wonder whether it is just done for us farangs {foreigners}).  The bungalows are set in luscious gardens with jasmine, palm trees, orchids, and hibiscus growing everywhere.  The staff puts flowers everywhere.  In urns outside our cabin.  In the roll of the towel you get at the pool.  On your bed.  On the mat on your floor.  In fact, when we arrived, we were surprised to find an arrangement in our toilet.  Maura took a picture, which I am pretty sure is the only vacation picture of a toilet that I have every witnessed.  We were downright giddy when we came back from dinner later that day and discovered that, during the turn-down service, more flowers were put in the toilet. 

So what did we do?  Precious little.  Sat on the beach by the gulf.  Sat by the pool.  Did yoga by the beach.  Ate yummy Thai food.  Unfortunately, what we did not do was put on sufficient sunscreen.  I have a few burned spots, including a big red splotch surrounding white spots on the top of each leg where I had wiped off sunscreen.  The spots look, respectively, like my initial and an alien hand print.  Maura got the brunt of the sun’s ire and has a particularly interesting thatched pattern down her front.  Now, at least, we match all the other red, cured Westerners in Thailand.  Especially since I lost my second Durham Bulls hat and had to buy a new gigante beach hat.  [I later found the Bulls hat, so really it was just an excuse to by a new, unnecessary beach hat.]

I have finally been able to upload some pictures to the blog.  Hoorah!   I have uploaded through Day 4, but for some reason those pics aren’t showing up.  More to follow.

February 5

Today, we spent the morning cruise through the bay again. We puttered through small water villages, where people actually live in houses on the water.  It seems their main livelihood is storing kayaks and longboats and bringing them to the junks every day.  I mean, these people are at least an hour from dry land. 

We then stopped at the “Surprising Cave” (ooooh).  What was surprising was that there were more steps!  All right, not too many.  The “Surprising Cave” (the name makes me giggle) was “discovered” in 1902ish by a Frenchman, though Vietnamese fisherman had always known about it, so there you go.  It is a massive cave 100 or so steps from the bay with giant stalagmites and stalactites (quick, which grow down and which grow up — I have no idea!).  It is a Unesco World Heritage Site (whatever that means) and either Unesco or the Vietnamese government has decided it would be a good idea to shine purple and red lights all over the caves to, what, make it look more like See Rock City?  I half expected to, and one time thought I did, see a plastic gnome hiding among the nooks (DeSoto girls, you know what I’m talkin’ about.)  [Not my picture]

Another interesting facet of this tour was that the Vietnamese seem to see animals and symbols everywhere.  To wit:

• The guide brought us to one large cavern and said what funny thing do you see here [see picture to the right, again not mine].  I saw it and said, hmm, it’s a finger.  The guide said, could be a finger pointing up, but really it symbolizes a man and it is pointing at the hole in the cavern which symbolizes a woman.  Eww, gross.  Of course, that is exactly what it looks like and when I became a Puritan I don’t know. 
• We walked past a blob of a stala . . . the bottom one . . . with a larger blob at it’s front.  The guide said, what is this?  We scratched our heads.  A turtle?  Yes.  Is it male or female.  Vietnamese guides seem to love to ask questions you couldn’t possibly know the answer for.  U.K. did it all the time:  What tree is this, what crop is this, what kind of nest is this?  (Did you know that ants can make nests in trees?  Shiver.)  Turns out we couldn’t have known the answer until we got to the other side of the turtle fifteen minutes later to discover it was a female because there were some “eggs” nearby.  Students come here to rub the turtle’s head for good luck with their exams.  I forewent wisdom since rubbing stala . . . things makes them die.  I guess the Unesco police don’t care. 

Then as we were walking out of the caves back to home (via a very kitsch Rock Cityesque gift shop), I took a turn too close and my camera grazed the railing and I heard a snap, pop, clickclick, click and looked to see as my lens cap came to rest 15 feet down on the rocky embankment.  It seemed like my lens cap was lost forever.  And not for the first time.  [Flashback alert.]

When we were in Sapa, while we were walking for our “extra” tour up the mountain, I looked down and realized my lens cap was gone.  Quelle horror!  How would my precious camera the rest of the arduous journey?  I turned back to retrace my steps, but quickly realized –what with the dense fog, the lack of street signs, the fact that every little stall and store looked the same — that I had no idea where we had come from.  In despair (or maybe resignation), I turned back towards our little group when, out of the fog, two Black H’Mong women approached me.  I assumed they were trying to sell me something, but I realized that what one of the women held was my lens cap!  I was so thankful that I took her picture.  Of course, that wasn’t much of a reward and actually made me more guilty.  So then I decided I should buy something from her.  I was hoping she was selling a wee trinket, a bracelet or bobble of some sort.  Oh, no, she was selling one of the huge handmade blankets that one is supposed to admire in Sapa.  “You buy from me?”  Her particular blanket was pretty damn ugly, dirty, and had a stench that only increased the further away from Sapa we got [at press time, it still reeks].  Plus, she wanted 250,000 dong for it, about $15.  Which I am sure was too much and which I know they giggled when I gave it to them.  But I figured my guilt blanket could keep me and my Western guilt warm at night.  [Which it couldn't because it got so wet from the fog it that it was still wet when we got to Hoi An two days later]. 

[Update:  The blanket quickly became my albatross, my noose around my neck, and all sorts of other grim metaphors.  It was heavy and took up lots of space.  And I had to leave it in a plastic bag so it wouldn't stink up the rest of my stuff.  I actually tried to abandon it when we left the Bangkok hotel.  Ironically, the hotel housekeeping staff was so nice, they found the blanket, put it in a plastic bag, and attached it to the bags we had left for the day after we checked out.  Blerg.  I sent the blanket home with poor Maura, who may well be lugging the thing up her staircase as I write this.  Sorry, Mars.]

[Further update: I washed the blanket and it still smells like water buffalo ass with a two pack a day habit.  I put it on my balcony hoping it would air out, but it nearly got blown away.  What a tragedy that would have been.  The picture to the right is not of my blanket.  Mine is much uglier.]

Back in Halong Bay, after I looked at my lens cap to say my final goodbye, Mark announced (da-dada-DA), “I’ll get it.”  He immediately commenced hopping over fences, climbing down rocky embankments, crawling under bridges.  I kept trying to tell him not to bother, but Lindsay sighed, “No, you’d better let him.  It’s a South African male thing.”  But the South African machismo reunited me with my lens cap and it felt so good.

After that fiasco, we got back on the boat for blunch (yes, Long invented a new way to have a late breakfast, and why not?).  More fish, more squid (which I did nottry.  enough with the squid!), more shrimp.  It was all (save the squid) delicious.  We got back to the wharf, back in our minivan, back to yet another disabled craft store, back to Hanoi.  Unfortunately, we had 3 hours to kill in Hanoi and sat, cold, in yet another restaurant until it was time for our flight to Hoi An.