Vung Tau

Sunday was definitely a fun day. Woke up a little later than normal to catch a hydrofoil to Vung Tau, which is the beach. The hydrofoil is a boat, which as the name suggests, is lifted off the water. Pretty clever, reduces drag. I wish I had gotten a picture of the boat, because it was pretty cool, but we will have to make do with what we are given. Here are some pictures from the boat ride. I'm not sure which river we were on, but it was scenic.

The beach was cool and stuff, but what was really on my mind was how this guy got to that spot.

I got some food at a KFC before we went hiking, and if there are any KFC executives reading this, bring Pokkits to America. They're delicious.

Before we went to the beach, we went hiking up to some statues around Vung Tau. The first place was a little easier, just some stairs with religious statues and a church. This picture is Amy cheesing in front of a statue. That was as high as we climbed at this place. 

Here's Greg inside a church on the way up this hike. A service was actually about to begin so we kept our tourism to a minimum there.

The second hike was a lot more serious. We had to climb a ridiculous amount of stairs. In the heat. I can't honestly say I thought it was terrible though. Manageable, but we were a little soaked once we got to the top. This hike was mostly more statues, but there were some cool views.

This is looking down from the top of our hike. One thing we couldn't wrap our heads around was the Vietnamese people's aversion to suntans. In the Vietnamese culture, light skin is considered beautiful. As hot as it got, our Vietnamese friends were always covered from head to toe. You can see in this picture front and almost center, he's wearing long sleeves and a mask, where  Jake has a basketball jersey around his neck. It was brutally hot. 

I took this on the way down of one of the views. Pretty gorgeous. There was a nice view of the beach from the top, but it wasn't coming out nicely in photos because of the trees in the way. 

After this hike we finally cruised over to the beach. It was gorgeous, but of course I forgot to take pictures. Jumped into the water as soon as I got there, so I didn't bring my phone. The water was practically bath water. Being in the water didn't actually cool us down, we had to get out for that to happen. Overall it was an average beach day, just swam and hung out. On our way out, I learned that I missed my face with the suntan lotion. That was a mistake but it never turned terrible so it probably won't be mentioned in the blog again. 

This is a picture of a thunder storm rolling in as we were about to get on the boat. It really didn't rain as much as I expected. It was the rainy season, but it didn't even rain every day. And when it did, it would pour for 30 minutes tops and stop. 

Once we were back in HCMC, we went to a Japanese restaurant. I got some sushi, and it was exactly the same as at home. A delicious eel roll. Some of the better sushi I've had. 

After dinner it was an early night. We had been busy practically all the time so a night off was nice. Monday we still had another day off to look forward to with market day.