Day 14 - You Haven't Lived Until You've seen Waltzing Matilda Preformed by a Vietnamese Boy Band

We had tickets to go on an all day boat cruise around some of the nearby island starting at 8:30 in the morning. The guide book highly recommended it and it seemed like a lot of fun. The weather was absolutely gorgeous again as we came up to our boat. Our boat was fairly small and incredibly brightly painted, with most of the space taken up by rows of seats in the form of long benches. There were people from lots of different countries on the boat, though the whole tour was given in only English and Vietnamese. Out tour guide was this very funny Vietnamese guy who was constantly cracking jokes and hitting on all the women. We headed out to the first island where we were going to do some snorkeling. It was already perry warm out and Me, Dave, and Ken, decided to have the first beers on the boat. The landscape rolling by was incredibly beautiful, with a clear blue sky and warm green islands. We passed some floating sort of shanty town made of boards and boats all tied together. We eventually came to the place where we could go snorkeling. They didn't have flippers, but there wasn't a ton of ground to cover so it was OK. One guy brought his own, but that seemed a little bit excessive.

The water wasn't very warm so it took me a while until I could draw the relaxed controlled breaths you need for snorkeling. Once I got going though it was a blast. Close to the boat I couldn't see much but nearer to the shore was a bunch of half submerged rocks with coral, and some brightly colored fish swimming around. If I sort of glided over the fish weren't disturbed even though I was just a foot or two from some of them. The coral wasn't that interesting, but there were quite a few different species of fish and some good sized schools of fish swimming around. When I was younger I had my own set of snorkeling gear so I could just float in pools looking at the bottom. I think the best part is just floating there being next to the fish. When I went snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia they just took me around to too many things so I never really got a chance to just spend some time in one place. People were also doing canon balls off of the top deck of the ship. Dave managed a pretty good flip, though he came pretty close to hitting his head on the lower level.

After that we steamed toward another island, while part of the crew prepared lunch in the incredibly small kitchen space near the back. The only toilet on the boat was actually a squat toilet, which was actually the first on I had seen in Vietnam. The low regard I had for them managed to fall further when I read in River Town that one student at his school actually died from falling while using a squat toilet. I always knew they are disgusting, but I learned that they are deadly as well. We stopped at the next place for lunch and they rearranged the benches in the middle into tables. The lunch was fantastic, with a huge spread of food that I mostly wondered how they fit on board. In Vietnam they have bread with a lot of their meals, which is a welcome change from China where bread is looked at as some odd western rarity. After lunch was perhaps the weirdest thing I have ever seen. One person brought out a home made drum fashioned out of a set of garbage can sized containers held together with string and bamboo. There was also a guy with a guitar and the captain worked as a singer. The tour guide started by saying, " In the past there have been some great boy bands; the Eagles, the Beatles, the Backstreet Boys, Westlife, and now us!"



They then proceeded to play some odd Vietnamese songs with one guitar, two not terribly talented singers, and a make shift drum. Leaving aside the question of is it more insulting to the Beatles and the Eagles to be labeled a boy band, or be compared to the Backstreet Boys and Westlife, some odd Irish band that no one in the US knows, why in God's name a boat tour needed a musical interlude is one of those questions that could perplex philosophers for ages. The fun continued as they asked people where they were from than played a regional song from that place as the person sang along. They even had songs for places like Holland, though I have no idea what it was. The best moment came though when they played the strangest version of Waltzing Matilda, Australia's unofficial national anthem, I've ever heard. Everyone was having a great time and they got a lot of people to dance for the last song. The other odd part were the finger nails of the lead singer slash captain. His thumb nail and pinky nail were grown out to grotesque length. This apparently has something to do with demonstrating that you don't need to do manual labor, and David has even heard his students say the really long pinky nail is beautiful. I've seen and accepted some pretty weird things, but seeing this band just materialize out of thin air was pretty crazy even by my standards.

After all the crazy singing was done they threw some floating devices overboard and set up a small floating bar. Some of us jumped off to join in the fun. The tour guide was the bar tender, serving the worst tasting red wine I've ever come across. It tasted like cheap grape juice that had been left for too long in the sun. Brian said he has heard that some really cheap Asian wines are actually made of grape juice with some grain alcohol for a kick. It was a lot of fun though to try to hold a cup with one hand while using the other to stay on your little floating inner tube. I took to balancing the cup on my head while trying to move. I talked to some of the other people floating by. A lot of them were Australians, who were interested to learn that I lived in Wollongong, only to ask why anyone would live there. After floating there for a while, and probably drinking as much sea water as wine, though the sea water also tasted better, the wine ran out and we got back on the ship. We went to some other island with a beach you could swim on, but we decided to stay on the ship and sit out in the sun on the roof. One Australian guy stayed with us. He worked at some sort of Boeing factory and said that since they were ahead of schedule they shut down for a few weeks so he went on vacation.

I'll never really understand why Australians like going to beaches in other countries when they have so many in their country, but there he was. We talked with him for quite a while and with a Chines guy who was 40 but looked 14. After a while the boat moved on to some aquarium, which was again skipped, only this time we were joined by a ton of Australians, who all for some reason seemed to be from Melbourne. After that the boat went back to port. It was a ton of fun and we agreed to meet the Australians later at a bar. We had dinner at some Mexican place, that seems to be the hardest food to find outside of America. We met them at some bar that specialized in serving buckets, literally, of various alcohols and juice. My stomach wasn't feeling great so I only had one, unlike Ken and Dave, which is why I'm the only one who remembers what happened that night. When Dave drinks he remains just as mellow as ever, but seems to joke around more. He started off drinking a ton so he was wasted pretty fast. One of the Australian girls seemed to like him but I think he was too drunk to notice. I mostly sat around and chatted with the ever changing cast of Australians who would sit at our table.

Ken is always a pretty intense person who likes to argue, and alcohol only seems to enhance that. He spent almost the entire night arguing with anyone about anything. The funniest moment came when he was in a long protracted debate over the deeper meanings in Roald Dahl's "The B.F.G." which I think may be the first time in the history of the world thats ever been discussed in heated terms in a bar. Me and Dave left before Ken and I was already in bed when I heard Ken downstairs yelling with some one. Not wanting to get involved I just let the argument peter out.