Vietnam: Day 7

7 am, waking up in the morning.  Gotta get fresh, gotta go downstairs.  Well, the hotel didn’t have cereal, but you get the idea.  Vung Tau is an hour and a half away by hydrofoil (a really fast boat), so we had to be up and in the hotel lobby by 7:45 so we could take a cab to the dock.  The girls were in a separate cab than we were, and the driver took them to the wrong dock by accident (or on purpose; the dock they went to was farther down, meaning it’d be more money for the cabbie).  Therefore, they had to run a few blocks in flip flops in order to make it before our boat left (the tickets were non-refundable).  The ride was pretty relaxing; we were going really fast, or so it seemed.

The hydrofoil we took to Vung Tau

Once we arrived, Tin (our “tour guide of sorts for this Plus3 trip) took us to quite a few religious areas in Vung Tau, including a shrine that Tin translated to Pagoda and a small mountain with a giant statue of Jesus at the top.  At Pagoda, I got a lot of really neat pictures of the religious area and a pretty nice video of the shrine itself, as well as people worshiping.  We weren’t allowed to wear hats, sunglasses, or shoes inside the shrine area either, which made it feel more authentic when we worshipped with the incense, just as the Vietnamese do.  After Pagoda is when we climbed the small mountain of stairs and twists and turns up to the giant Jesus statue, claimed by the Vietnamese to be the largest statue of Jesus in the world (though I’m not entirely sure on that belief).  It was a long, exhausting, and hot (let me repeat, HOT) walk up to the top, but you felt a sense of self-accomplishment upon reaching the summit.  There was a beautiful view from up there also.

Group shot in front of one of the statues

Jake and Eric about to release their birds as a form of worship

Tin!

The statue of Jesus atop the mountain

After lunch (at which we had some shrimp that were absolutely spectacular) we went to the beach to finish off our trip.  It was about 2:00 in the afternoon, and our boat back to Ho Chi Minh left around 4:30, giving us about 2 and a half hours on the beach to relax, plenty of time in Vietnam’s heat.  The water was really warm, almost to the point where it felt more like you were in bathwater than in the South China Sea (but still extremely relaxing).  We tossed the disc around for a bit before coming back ashore, drying off, and relaxing in the sun for a while.  Tin and An (a Vietnamese graduate student who is also helping us out and going with us throughout this trip) decided it would be “fun” to have us make fools of ourselves by doing some crazy team building games—banana races, team platforms, a strange water game… Although we looked ridiculous, it was still a fun time, especially because team 3 won it all (yeah!).

The group in front of the South China Sea

Another hour and a half boat ride commenced at 4:30, during which I slept for at least an hour (which was wonderful, by the way, especially after being out in the sun for so long).  Back at the hotel, I took a shower and began to write this wonderful post.  Why aren’t there places like Vung Tau in the States?