Today we will be pulling into Mayanmar (Burma) at around 2pm because of tides. So for now I am sitting in my room and enjoying a relaxing morning. Bridget (Roomie) just left to meet with her SAS family (At the beginning of the voyage you could sign up to be assigned an adult on the ship that is your SAS parent, you eat dinners or lunches with them and they treat you to free food on the 7th deck). So she is up on deck 7 with her “family” enjoying free smoothies (So jealous), my other roomie (Kim) is doing schoolwork in the library, so I have the room to myself.
Feb 15th
We woke up early for a free breakfast buffet at the hotel. After we split into groups, one group who was going hiking and another going to the beach. So we split up and I joined the beach group because hiking is not my forte, especially in 90 degree weather with humidity. So we went to the beach which was clean, empty and the tide was far. Which made it very beautiful. We ended up swimming with locals and laughing with them. I was with my friend Angela who speaks Vietnamese so she translated some of what they were saying and some for me, but for the most part we used charades or body language. They were really friendly… until they decided to start a splash war. In a pool I would say bring it on, but in the ocean… I hate salt water (and this salt water was especially salty and burned your eyes).
So needless to say me and Angela and her niece ended up swimming away and hanging out just us three. Which was fine because we just floated around and enjoyed the atmosphere. It was really nice being in the water because it was very hot outside. But after about an hour we had to get out to head back to the hotel, shower and get ready to check out. we arrived back at the hotel at around 10:30, and check out was noon but we wanted to be back before the hikers to shower.so I had the room to myself to shower and relax until they came back after their hike. Once they came back they all showered and got ready. Check out took a while because the go and check out the room before you leave and they take their time. After came lunch. What an experience lunch was.
Vietnam restaurants have no health code. Although the food everywhere we went was good, including this one, the conditions we ate in made it hard to enjoy the food. Trash piled high inter the table (including food trash), sitting in a very small space with many people, a table that wasn’t wiped down, our water pitcher had a bug in it and more. So I had a can of coke and ate my food with my eyes closed. The food was really good though! It was BBQ’ed out in the front and was fresh. After lunch we went back to the van and we found a place to go shopping. We all bought some souvenirs and once we were done it was around 2 and it was time to start heading back to the City. So we started our drive back, this time we were all pretty exhausted so we slept. Half way we stopped for a BR break, which bathrooms are also very different. There’s no TP or toilet seat. Also the sink is a glorified bucket that you just dip your hands into after applying soap. It amazes me how people live under these conditions but for them it’s normal. This rest stop was also where they sell “Vietnams best Milk and milk candy” we all bought some to try, loved it and ended up buying a lot of it and also some coconut candy which is also very yummy.
We arrived back in the city at almost 5pm and walked back to the ship from downtown. Once back on the ship we noticed Kim our roommate was acting strange and our friend Cindy pushed her a little too hard to tell us what’s wrong and she kind of exploded in emotion and asked to be left alone for the night. So we left and went into the city to give her space for a while, Bridget, Cindy and I. We had BK for dinner and Vietnamese ice cream. I also picked up my traditional Vietnamese dress I had tailored. It came our really really nice! We went shopping also and stayed out until around 11pm to give our roomie space. We came back and made small talk with Kim, although she was still upset but we went to bed right away since we had long plans for the next day.
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