Ha Long Bay-Day 1

Saturday, July 21, 2007

We met the teachers at the school at 6am (actually, we arrived around 6:15, but the bus didn’t come until 6:30) to go to Ha Long Bay. There were 24 of us total. 12 Americans, 4 kids from the school, and 8 teachers from Lomonoxop School. The 4 students were students who would be heading to the States to study. 2 this year, 2 next year. One of them is the daughter of Ms. Ha, who is the head of the English Department. Another was the daughter of the people who owned the hotel we stayed at and a third was a boy whose parents had paid to rent the bus for us to drive up. Lomonoxop has a very good exchange program with a school in Louisiana called Christian Life Academy. They take kids who are Juniors and Seniors and then many of them apply to colleges in the states.

We drove for about 1 ½ hours and then stopped at a rest area. It was a covered market with a bathroom building out back. It seems like it’s the ½ way point for the trip and several busses were stopped there. When you walked into the bathroom, there was a row of squat toilets. Fortunately for me there were also 2 restrooms with doors!! When I walked out there were about 25 people using the squat toilets at the same time…my was that crowded. When I got out, one of the US teachers was taking a picture of the bathroom building and Trang (Pronounced “Chuung”) commented that she had never seen someone take a picture of that!! While we were waiting to get back on the bus, there was a pond, small rocks and the US teachers (boys!). With boys, water and rocks, the only logical thing to have happen is that the boys start throwing rocks into the water to see who can throw the farthest.

We drove a couple more hours as the sky clouded up. We asked if it was supposed to rain and were assured it would be dry, however it started to rain and pour for the daily monsoon. I was glad we were in the bus and not out walking in town. When we got to the hotel, it was still sprinkling and cloudy, but it looked like we had driven through the worst of it. We stayed at “Number One Hotel.” When we got there our rooms weren’t ready yet, so we all dropped our stuff in one room and got ready for lunch.

Lunch was an amazing event. We sat at a very large table with all of us and began dish after dish…boiled eggs/tomato and cucumber slices, shrimp, squid (of varying sizes-see picture), beef, French fries, soup, greens, rice and watermelon for dessert. Plate after plate kept coming. We knew when we saw the rice, we were near the end, but there were 9 different dishes in all.

After lunch we had our “siesta” time for everyone to rest and take a nap. I played cards for a while and then went to read a book. We met at 3:30 to go for a “walk along the beach.” What is said and what is meant are not always the same. We actually went swimming. There was a long pier with a floating dock off the end. There were 5-6 of us who didn’t swim, but most of the American Teachers did.

When we went back to the hotel for dinner, we were at 2 different tables. All the Americans at one, being served a version of “spaghetti” (actually noodles with butter and garlic) and the Vietnamese having fresh seafood. It was definitely a situation of the local food looking better than the “American” food. In the evening we took a van/taxi to the “Dolphin” show. Actually, it was folk dance, folk music, then sea lions and a beluga whale. Some of the Vietnamese teachers stayed for “water music” which was like a musical fountain. We were all ready for bed by the time we got home and everyone said they slept well. The American teachers are on thin mattresses on wood at the school, so a bed (even an extremely HARD bed) was far more comfortable for them.