Beansprout Land

I'm exhausted! Yesterday started as a lazy day of splashing around in the sea, napping, wandering, and eating squid and drinking Saigon beer on the seafront.

beach beer

It finished lying in the sand at 2am, after a beach party at Nha Trang Sailing Club (not really a sailing club, more just a club). Free 'jam jar' of cocktail on entry; Dung drank half and was more trashed than I've ever seen him. We also went to a cool bar called Crazy Kim's; the name is crap but the owner set it up to support her charity supporting the victims of paedofilia from Vietnam's sex tourists, in Nha Trang and elsewhere. I think it's a really good idea, because it's just a fun bar that people want to go to, awesome tunes, but you're passively supporting the charity by buying drinks and playing pool. It works better than collection buckets, guilt-tripping people into helping. They also run a free school for the children, and ask tourists to volunteer. I find it a bit hard to believe that grubby backpackers teaching a one-off class is really a good way for children to learn, but I guess it's better than nothing. I'd like to teach some classes when Dung goes back to Hanoi (n.b. I don't consider myself a grubby backpacket, not yet). Today we woke up late, ate fish soup for breakfast (it was a bit rank) and then caught a bus to a theme park called Vinpearl Land, on an island near Nha Trang.

cable car joy

When I'd read about it, I'd dismissed it, since theme parks are usually shite and tourist-ridden and stressful. Dung is unblighted by my snobby prejudices about only doing things that are 'authentic' when on holiday, and wanted to go, so we went. There's nothing cultural about it, and yes they built a huge concrete theme park on top of what was once a beautiful unspoilt island; that doesn't mean it's not awesome fun. We spent the first four hours at the water park, on slides and in wave pools, getting overexcited and screaming a lot.

as happy as a pig in shit

trippy fish in the aquarium

The next three hours were in an arcade containing every kind of arcade game imaginable. I discovered that I'm well good at basketball; that Vietnamese people ride bumper cars to AVOID getting bumped (I guess that's why they call them dodgems); and that riding a mechanical bull in a short skirt is the fastest way to introduce the Vietnamese public to your pants. When we came out it was dark, and we spent the evening playing on traditional funfair rides: merry-go-round, rollercoaster, chairoplanes, swingboat. We got overexcited again and screamed a lot. By this time the park was almost completely empty, and we went for a walk all around the whole place. Because it's on an island, you're always right by the sea, and it was beautiful. Then we got the cable car back down over the sea. When we got back into town, we ate dinner at an amazing amazing vegetarian restaurant a few doors down from our hotel. "Chay" is Vietnamese for "vegetarian", but in practice it means how Buddhist monks eat i.e. completely vegan and no alcohol. They also think it's important to make food that meat-eaters will feel comfortable eating, so lots of fake meat - hence the packet of "vegan baby squid" I posted on Facebook. Basically it was delicious. Now I sleep.