Bai Bien Cua Toi (IX&X): Frisbee Mania, Work, Waves, Wacky creatures

No, watching the dawn announce the new day NEVER gets old ;-)

Makes perfect sense for a full moon:  the moon sets exactly when the sun rises !

I finish this post after 5 weeks of miserable Vancouver existence ....

.... and I finally UNDERSTAND why I can't get out of bed in this town.....

When I get to the market at 7:00 my first route is to the store is where I saw the unloved little kitten yesterday. I don't see it and the woman answers my hand-waving question with a shake of her head.   
SHITE.  I hope the kitten found a happy place...

Binh invites me to sit for breakfast with them but exclusively speaks Vietnamese.  WTF?   More news:  I am informed that I'm moving to my old room today instead of tomorrow because the other guests are leaving one day early.  NO question "Would you like to move to your old room one day early?", it just got decided.  Ah well ....

Pierre & Paige sleep too long, lOl.  Yesterday I offered to drive one of them to the market but they only crawl out of their room at 7:45.  It is already getting HOT! They happily accept the offer of using my scooter to get them to the market. 

I barely step out after waking up when my stuff is hustled into the new room and I barely have time to pack stuff before my bags move.  WTF?

Today there are a LOT of things in the water.  Floating plastic bags, candy wrappers, AND FISH.
I'm floating somewhere out there when in the extremely calm see about 10 black about thumb-long tiny fish spaced VERY close together facing me.  I propel back a bit.  They follow.  WOU!  Keep your distance.  This might be a Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind, but I'm not comfortable. After repeated attempts to keep them at bay with my hands and feeling one touch my hand  I swim away as fast as I can.(Silly, really, what am I thinking?  Mini Piranhas?).    

15:00
I could have slept more but the feeling of something scurrying over my outstretched arm wakes me.   My eyes open and I see a loooong tail disappearing.   SCREAM ! A LAT?
Fortunately not.
A bit of Jump & Broom & Scream action and I have maneuvered my friendly Mini-Komodo out the by now open door.

15:30
I just put my shorts back on to go swimming and am having a last cigarette on the terrace, when Quang cruises around the corner with his BIG grin.   Now normally I can live with sitting next to each other for 10 minutes without anyone saying a word, but I wanted to go swimming!

Binh involuntarily saves the day by suggesting we play Frisbee with her son. 

Quang refuses four times but then plays anyway.... and he's good at it!

I had told the French/American couple that they should grab the Frisbee whenever they felt like it.  

Half an hour ago I see onlythem playing with it.  NOW, a dozen village kids are involved.

  Remember:  These kids have NEVER EVER seen a Frisbee before ;-)

Cam on nhieu, Thi Lan !

Dinner time with the newly arrived nhung phu nu Duc.    
What can I say about them?   
They're nguoi Duc, lOl.

A last smoke-break and I just KNOW that I have to get my camera out again....

Thank you, Vietnam !

Another morning, another open-air spectacle ;-)

The BIZARRE thing:  The hotel owner and most guests sleep until 8 or 9 am and don't get to see ANY of this !

6:00
work still looms over today....

the weather is changing... or maybe it's just the seafloor.   The sea is quite flat about 50 meters out but throws up man-high waves close to the shore.  

And it's FUN crashing through them....

OMFG!
Kiwi.com has added a new Nomad Mode.  You pick a few destinations and the duration that you want to stay there.  
So I tried it....spe with amazing results:


These are the flights:

flight Vancouver - Honolulu
1 night in Honolulu (NO, hotel room cost is NOT included -)
flight Honolulu - Osaka
1 night in Osaka
flight Osaka - Tokyo
3 nights in Tokyo
flight Tokyo - Okinawa
1 night in Okinawa
flight Okinawa - Taipei
2 nights in Taipei
flight Taipei - Saigon

A chance to visit Tokyo AND Taipei AND to fly from Vancouver to Saion.  And all THAT for CAD$ 795  (US$ 610).
FABULOUS !

I walk over to the kitchen area and Muoi waves me over and motions for me to don wire-less headphones which today actually emit music.

6 or more months ago, I got some FREE Bluetooth Sony headphones with my new cell phone.   But I didn't know what to do with them..... so I left them in a suitcase in Vietnam.   When someone was behaving poorly by listening to some religious crap on their cellphone at the dinner table (the usual suspect), I got the thing out of storage but presented it to Thom & Thung instead.   They had never seen anything like it.   A USB charging cable?   I showed them that it should be inserted into a wall plug.   NO music coming out yet? was the reaction.  NO, the plug is only for charging. 
So I was delighted to see that this morning someone had figured out how to establish the Bluetooth connection to a cellphone!  After all, the operating instructions did NOT come in tieng Viet ;-(....... toi rat vui ;-)

Time to head back to the beach, fish another large bag out of the water and start filling it with flotsam & jetsam.... 

 .....and true to the Vietnam Motto "Something NEW every day", I see these things on the beach.  

 About the size of a bottle cap, but definitely ORGANIC, lOl.

extraterrestrial ?

... and YES, I'm STILL going in the water ...

It's Chau knocking at the door.   He wants me to get a massage from his son.   I try to chicken out with 'ngay mai', but Thu/ng is leaving today...... OK

When I get to the common area, Chao is already dragging out a mattress for my to lay down on.  OH NO, there are reasons why that is NOT going to happen!  I tell Thu/ng "shoulders for 10 minutes".   

OMG, that massage school in Quy Nhon teaches him well.   All the tension from a week of computer work just melts under his thumbs.   This kid is 16 years old and 5'6" tall but it feels as if those thumbs drilling into my tense muscles belong to a 6'4' 200 pound Istanbul Hammam gorilla.

MUST do that again when he comes back here again!

The store.

63,000 VND for 15 small brownies, 3 bags of banh com, 4 pots of yogurt (unfortunately with aloe vera), and a bag of peanut brittle.  

15:30

Time to collect some garbage and to JUMP some WAVES ;-)

  

flotsam

An e-mail from Paris.   I think I might have a travel companion for Namibia, LOL.                                                                                                                     But she also wants to go to Zanzibar!   With a name like that.... GREAT IDEA !                                             

World, here we come !

A quick dinner at the Swedish place..... when I try to leave a tip, the Viet waitress & cook thinks I'm arguing about the bill.... she thinks I want to pay less, but I just try to pay more..... it is UNKNOWN in rural Vietnam....I shouldn't ruin it ;-)

The third German 'Sauna friend' has arrived.  Bland ;-( as a first impression but in retrospect she is the most darling one.  But the newly arrived French man (living in Australia with an Asian wife & kid) IS INTERESTING.    

It's strange how one notices that SPARK of intelligence in people right away....  NO 'fabulous weather, eh?' or 'How about them Canucks?' talk here..... within 3 minutes of our conversation we agree that the previous Australian PM's message of 'no more boats' is an atrocity....  let's see how long they will stay....