Nha Trang is probably as close to Miami Beach as you're going to get in Asia. We took a taxi early in the morning along the beach road towards the South end of the city. There were remnants of the party scene from the night before, and signs that tonight would be an even bigger night - there was some kind of sea festival on tonight, and it was a Saturday.
We met the Mudfords at the lineup for the 3.2km cable car to the Vinpearl theme park.... It wasn't hard to spot each other - Andrew is 6'3" with 3 blondies so we pretty much stuck out all day. The park was a pretty decent amusement slash water park, though what we noticed pretty early on was that the Vietnamese threshold for speed and excitement was a little more diminutive than Western standards.
After a few small rides, we headed down to queue up for a ridge runner type ride. I was the first car in our group of 4 cars, with Robin riding with me and Abby with Beth. The good and bad things with the ridge runner rides are that you control your own speed - this can be fun if you really want to let it all out (in Collingwood, Papa is a grandkid favourite as he is known to go down sans brake!) but if you have someone slow in front of you, it can't be like watching paint dry. Robin and I started down really fast but within 20 seconds, we were in a line of 5 cars bunched up! We were all following a middle aged guy by himself in a red car going about 5km/h!! It was kind of frustrating but mostly hilarious. We joined in with the other traffic jam victims in catcalling at the guy. It was pretty funny. When we all got to the bottom, the guy's extended family was there howling with laughter and pointing at the train of cars moving slowly behind him.
Too much excitement for us! We headed over to the watermark, which was still pretty dead at this point. We joined the girls in a couple of runs which was pretty fun. Pretty soon though, the girls ditched us! They had that look... You know, like we were invisible, which was just fine with us as that is always a sign of good fun.
Most of the slides were pretty tame, though some of them were definitely not tested with Gaijinzillas in mind - the four of us kids adults went on a wide four seater ride and we got so high on the turns that we were shoulders and heads above the edge. We all collapsed into the finish and looking back I'm surprised nobody lost a tooth! Andrew also attacked a head first ride so aggressively that he almost went right through the end of the ride...
The day wouldn't be complete without yet another cheesy cutout shot...
By early evening, we headed back to the main area, and saw a huge queue for the ride back to the mainland. So the kids were off again to check out more rides. I swear if we didn't collect them an hour or so later, they would have stayed there all night.
In line for the cable car back, I noticed the same hilarious sign inside the popular Japanese fast food joint called Lotteria that I'd seen in Dalat but I didn't have my camera on me. It's their hilarious interpretation of that old-west free wheeling spirit....I guess?
It was a great day with the Muddy's, and a really fun week catching up. Both families' girls were already complaining about what they were going to do without the other pair! That's always a good sign :-). Is very sure it won't be another 18 years before we see Kylie and Andrew. Now that our families are well under way, the travel bug is starting to hit hard.
We said our goodbyes after a nice dinner and clambered into a tiny taxi. The drive home was a lot more action than we'd expected. The streets were packed with motos and pedestrians taking in a huge fireworks display - we crawled home, but none of us minded. You'll never be bored in Vietnam if you like people watching, and tonight was no exception.
No comments:
Post a Comment