snorkeling and fun peeps

Today we woke up early and got breakfast at the hotel. Soon our driver came to pick us up. A few other people from our hotel were going on the same tour. We got loaded into a van and headed south to Sao Beach. Everyone we've talked to mentions this beach as the nicest beach on the island. As we got to the beach we were loaded onto a little boat to take us out to our bigger boat which was to be our home for the day :-) Another boatload of people got on, too. There was one older couple from Australia and some younger gap-year-aged kids from somewhere English speaking but most people on board were around our age and spoke English. We headed out to a remote island about an hour off the coast. In that time we started talking to the others on board. Get this- one guy on board lives in Jackson Heights, Queens. His good friend is a guy who works in study abroad at NYU (who I know because I met him at a party for Lindsey's study abroad- Lins, he's friends with that Dan guy!!) and then somehow the topic of being adopted came up and he's adopted too! It was crazy how much we had in common. We started chatting about our respective adoption stories- you'd be surprised the random places the adoption card comes up. So random. Anyway, another guy was there who is teaching English in Hanoi but from Alaska. He's traveling with a girl from Prague who works for the UN in Hanoi. There was also this French-Canadian couple as well. Soon wee anchored and fished for our lunch. I had NO luck- I caught no fish at all :-( I got a couple of pulls but apparently I had smart fish who just took the bait and said "see ya, sucker!" to the hook. It was fun trying, though! I think everyone but Heather and me caught something. Someone caught some sort of eel thing. We didn't eat that, though :-)

Next we headed closer to the island to go snorkeling. I love snorkeling. I kind of go off into my own world and don't come up out of the water for large periods of time. I think that's because I've been diving a few times and when diving you can't come up. Snorkeling, for those of you who aren't ocean inclined, is where you have goggles and a snorkel to breath through, so you can keep your head under water and breath at the same time. Scuba, on the other hand, involves a tank of oxygen and actually going UNDER the water. I didn't go diving this time, just snorkeling. The coral was beautiful. There are sea urchins everywhere on the bottom. They are black with spikes and have neon eyes in the middle. I took some pictures with Heather's underwater camera- not sure how well they will turn out but I hope they do! I saw some big colorful fish as well and I tried to follow them around for awhile. I try my best to barely move when I'm snorkeling to not disturb the fish or the coral. Standing on coral can kill it, so I try not to touch it at all.

We got back on the boat and saw that they had collected a bunch of sea urchins and cooked them in their shell. We each ate one- they were really good! I've had them before as sushi, but I didn't like the flavor- this time there was some sort of sauce and it made it taste nice. We then had a feast of a lunch- the fish people had caught, other fish, some sort of soup with daikon and carrots (daikon! I've missed you!), rice, noodles- so much food. We ate then chilled as the boat headed to another area to snorkel again. This second area had even prettier coral and more fish than the first area. It was super close to the surface of the water, so much so that I had to not kick my feet to get over the coral without touching or scraping against it. It was pretty cool. We stayed there for awhile then headed back to Sao Beach to chill on the beach and in the water. The water is beautiful there, and the beach has white sand. I played frisbee with Sam and Adam for a bit, but as any of you who know me know, I SUCK at frisbee so that didn't last very long. We soon got herded back to the van to head back.

On the way back we stopped at a pearl farm. We saw a demonstration of cracking open an oyster to get the pearl, then saw the difference between a good pearl and a bad one (spots, not perfectly round, etc.) Heather bought some stuff and I wandered around. By this time, the extensiveness of my sunburn was setting in. My back is bad, but the back of my legs are on FIRE. I put sunscreen on alot, but when you're snorkeling your back is floating on the surface, and with the sun reflecting off the water onto you you are bound to get burned. It doesn't help that a) I'm a redhead and prone to bad burns anyway, and b) I'm on an anti-malarial drug that makes me even more prone. I wish there were a drug I could take to boost my skin's ability to handle the sun. Anyone know if there's a certain vitamin that helps this? I would pay good money not to have to cover every inch of myself with sunscreen every single day this summer...
We got back to our hotel and showered and chilled for a bit. I fell asleep trying to read my book- it had been a LONG day!

We got up and headed to the Rainbow Bar to meet up with the people we'd met earlier. Our taxi driver didn't know that bar so we ended up being dropped off at a hotel and walking along the beach to get there, but we got there. We had a beer there and chatted for awhile then walked up the beach to a French restaurant. They had this lemon rum which is apparently native to Phu Quoc- it was delicious! I had really spicy shrimp for dinner. We hung out there drinking the lemon rum for awhile then decided we really wanted to go to karaoke. We asked the people at the restaurant, and were told that "karaoke" was only for the guys (aka a place to pick up prostitutes- this is true in many places in SE Asia) but that the taxi driver would take us to a disco or somewhere to dance. They ended up taking us to a place that had karaoke and wasn't seedy, so it was perfect. Soon we took over the stage singing all sorts of music badly. I dueted on Livin on a Prayer (anyone who knows me in a karaoke box knows it's one of my staples) with Adam, who might be even more into the song than I am which is amazing. Heather and I did "Man in the Mirror" as a shout out to Michael, RIP. A Vietnamese lady with an awesome voice joined us for some songs. We danced and had a great time. Soon they were closing and trying to get us to leave :-) We paid our bill and were sitting outside waiting for the taxi when one of the guys working at the club started talking to me. He was like, "you don't recognize me?" It was Tom from a couple of days ago!! I didn't recognize him from a combination of it being dark, him wearing a uniform, and the drinks I had had. He works at that club. We told him we'd swing back by tonight and hang out. He's adorable. Our taxi driver informed us his name is actually Tong and not Tom, but I like Tom better so I'm going to keep calling him that, at least to myself.

We made plans to meet the same peeps tomorrow night at the Dog Bar. Should be another fun night!
Tomorrow's my last day here :-( Thursday morning Heather and I head in opposite directions- me back to Cambodia (long journey again) and her to the Mekong Delta and eventually to Saigon to head home.

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