We Found Nemo

We had an early start this morning for a trip out to the islands off the mainland for some snorkeling. We sat outside a cafe for breakfast, which happened to be right next to a preschool. It was fun watching all of the children arrive on the back of mum or dad's motorbike, fully rugged up because of the chilly morning (it was probably already 30 degrees by now). They all seemed pretty excited to start the day. We went on a dive boat with about 15 others, most of them divers. It was a 20 minute boat ride through crystal clear blue water to our first snorkeling site. It was a good thing we had wetsuits as the water was cold, and shocking when we first jumped in. We spent about 40 minutes swimming around the reef. Although cold, the water was pretty clear. We saw tons of fish and lots of different types of coral. Nige was having mask problems, and I started to get really cold, so we were pretty much done after 40 minutes. About an hour later, we cruised to a different island. Here the water was much more shallow and clearer. It was a better place to be snorkeling. It was gorgeous, TONS of fish and colourful corals of all types. Most of the cast of 'Finding Nemo' made an appearance, except for Bruce (thankfully!). We saw a few different types of sea stars, trigger fish, parrot fish, squid, moorish idols (angel fish?), nemos (I know the technical name but can't spell it), jellyfish, and heaps more types of fish that we don't know the name of. But they were all beautiful, and making funny little noises as they pecked at their coral lunch. Nige managed to fix his mask problem, and Kel managed to push her fear of sharks to the back of her mind, so we were able to enjoy about an hour of swimming around. It probably appeared very romantic as we held hands, floating on the surface and kicking our flippers (actually we were freezing and shit scared of sharks, so we didn't want to leave each other). We arrived back on the mainland around 2:00 and had a hot Vietnamese lunch waiting for us at the dive shop. Nige went back to the hotel room and Kel went to get her hair cut and coloured. It sounds crazy to think that I would trust anyone to do my hair other than my own hairdresser, but I really didn't care, and it was cheap. And the guy was French, so how bad could it be, right? About 2 hours later, I walked out with hair shorter than intended but the colour looks great and all for less than $30US. And it was a really nice treat to have my hair washed with proper shampoo AND conditioner! We decided to have a cocktail on the beach, so we headed to a place called The Sailing Club. It is a gorgeous restaurant/bar right on the beach, completely up our alley in the decor department. We each had a cocktail (Long Island Iced Tea for Nige, something bananay for Kel) and enjoyed being at such a great place. We did the math, and decided that the cocktails were not really that expensive and we would have paid a few dollars more for each drink at home. But then we continued doing math, and worked out that for the same price, we could have had 21 litres of bia hoi (draught beer) at our 'local' pub, sitting on tiny plastic stools at tiny plastic tables, served out of a huge 21 litre plastic bottle. Oh well. The cocktails were good, but we can assure you, we'll never make that mistake again! We then headed out for an Indian dinner. We went to Omar's...again. It is the third in a chain of Omar's, one in Hue, which was our first Indian in Vietnam, one in Hoi An, which we also enjoyed, and this one, which was the best of them all. We completely stuffed ourselves and actually got to meet THE Omar on the way out. The weather at night is perfect, not too hot with a slight breeze to keep the air cool. We would have loved to go back to The Sailing Club for another cocktail, as they were having a bonfire on the beach tonight, but after the sad realisation before concerning the cocktail to beer ratio, we just couln't justify it, so we headed off to bed.