About an hour later we arrived at a floating village. The Red Dragon Junk was already there, Michael and Carie's Junk showed up shortly after us. We hung out for a bit,,, finished breakfast,, then we boarded the tender and headed to the main dock. We transfered from the tender to a small Asian lady's row boat where she proceeded to paddle us around the village (no, she isn't the purpose of this Blog's title),,,, These folks live a very different life then any of us could imagine. Katie and I were blown away. Their homes are extremely small, they float on the water and they are tied up to each other in groups of 2 to 10.
The village makes its money from fishing and harvesting pearls. Within the last few years the tour companies started paying the village to allow tourists to come in and paying the villagers for each pound of trash they give to the tour company. We saw a boat with a lot of barrels on it going around the village,,, I asked if that was the pump out boat. This term wasn't familiar to them. "You know, the boat that empties the toilets" --- Response: "No sir, toilets are direct" --- swim anyone? It turns out the boat was the water boat that fills the fresh water tanks in each house.
We bought a few knick knacks at the floating local store, toured the school and headed back. On our way back we passed the grocery store,,, it's a lady on a boat with everything you can imagine. She boats to each house and you buy direct from her. The guide referred to her as a floating 7-11. We also saw babies, no more than 2 years old, running around by themselves on the docks. I guess they teach the kids to swim at an early age,,,, we can only hope.
The ride back to the harbor was interesting. While cruising along we started to hear gun fire. We came around a rock and there were bullets hitting the water and two Vietnamese navy ships near each other. Out of no where a little speed boat comes at us with guys waving little red flags telling us to leave the area. We did a quick U turn and found another way home.
Along the way they fed us, again,,, lunch was beef and scallops for Sir (me) and chicken and scallops for Madam (Katie). Everyone in Vietnam refers to us as Sir and Madam, it's really funny. Our guide said we had a ton of time to kill and asked if we wanted a Vietnamese Massage. For your reference, the answer to this question should always be No Thank You. Not knowing that at the time and,,,, well, we love the "spa" annnnnnd we did have some time to kill sooooo, sure, why not. Our first Vietnamese Massage, here we come. But wait,,,, how much? Oh,,, don't worry, it is only $15 US including the tip. (Red Flag),,, For $15, Katie and I will take two masseuses each,,, (bad idea)
The place we showed up at was not exactly spa like. It looked more like one of those laundry facilities you would go to in college. We went upstairs to the group massage room which was a small air conditioned room with 6 lazyboy like chairs on each side of the room. They had us change in to these very bright colored shorts. Katie couldn't stop laughing,,, well, until they came back in the room and started the massage. It hurt. It hurt so bad,,,,, they were rubbing the skin off our arms, pushing extremely hard on anything they touched, hitting / pounding us with their hands all while making a snapping sound. Our guide was getting a massage with us (I guess group massages are the thing) and we kept asking why it hurt so bad. He kept saying "Vietnamese Massage Feel So Good" --- uhhhh, no. The best we could come up with that these women were very angry and needed to take their frustration out on us. Afterwards Katie and I decided the pain was worth the experience,, we laughed from our gut,,,, but once was enough.
After the massage experience we jumped back in the car and headed out on our 3 hour journey to the airport. We stopped at a gas station about halfway to the airport. Another heads up to all of you future Vietnam travelers, never use the restroom at a Vietnamese gas station,,,, ever. I'll leave it at that.
We got the airport and got checked in,,, no problem. The airport was dirty, very dirty. Once through security we went in the business class lounge and hung out for 2.5 hours. It was all you could eat rice and all you could drink beer. We decided to build a beer tower,,, it helped pass the time and made the place feel not so dirty. We saw them boarding our flight, left the lounge and hopped aboard. Katie and I were the only 2 in a 16 person business class,,,, that's the first time I've ever seen that on any plane.
Just when we thought an airport couldn't get any dirtier we landed in Hue,,,, the pictures speak for themselves. We grabbed our luggage, found our guide and headed strait for the hotel. We met up with Michael and Carie at the bar, compared stories of our Junk adventure and then headed off to our room. This room is amazing,,, very large with a much larger balcony. It's the largest room in the hotel with it's own private walkway to the hotel lobby,,,, according to the bell person this room is reserved for "kings and queens only" --- we thought that was very funny. That was our Monday,,, off to bed.....
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| 2010-06-14_Honeymoon in Hue |
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