BLUE CORAL DIVING

The second 'lagoon' where we snorkeled, nearly alone!

BLUE CORAL TOURS
This was THE absolute HIGHLIGHT of the trip. I had been looking forward to snorkeling here, and I was not disappointed. In fact, it was even better than I had imagined. Anthony snorkeled for the first time here, but unfortunately, we didn’t bring his contacts and he (obviously) couldn’t wear his glasses, so he didn’t see much detail. It was a good mechanical practice for Hawaii, though.

They picked us up at the hotel at about 8:20 and it took a whole 5 minutes to drive to the loading dock. The boat was a large wooden flat bottom with slatted wooden benches under the cover. We sat with them up as seats for the rides to each site and to lunch, but coming back from lunch, we made them into big long lounge chairs by putting the backs of one to the front of the one behind it.

There were 8 people on the boat plus the staff. I need to make a plug here for the staff, too, because they were wonderful: professional, kind, helpful—regular boyscouts and girlscouts. There were 2 Australians and 2 Vietnamese. The Australian girl was there working for the dry season. She’s a divemaster. Her mother lives in Hoi An, but was in the US for the summer trying to find sponsors for her organization, www.childrenseducationfoundation.org.au. This organization helps educate young women and girls in the highland areas of VN, mostly around Sapa and Dalat, where the culture does not yet value education for girls, seeing as their job in life is to stay home, raise babies, cook, and clean the house. Talk about an organization after my own heart!!!

As for us snorkelers and divers, there was a family (the husband was German and the wife was Vietnamese), an Australian couple, Anthony and me, and a crazy (and I do mean crazy) economics teacher from Belgium. He wore his Belgian flag around on the back of his backpack. (At one point in time, I joked that he did this so that no one would mistake him for an American. ) At first, I thought that the 3—he and the 2 Australians—were together because he was talking at them a mile a minute. After a while, though, I figured out that he had just adopted them as listeners, because I picked up on some crazy statement (he made so many, I couldn’t keep track of them all) and asked her, “WHERE did you pick HIM up?” She laughed and said, “We didn’t!” We started talking, and when it came up that I was a teacher, he-Carl, I believe—chimed in “Oh! I’m a teacher, too!” I don’t know why, but we found that hysterical, and while we were laughing I said, “THAT’S why you talk so much! We talk for a LIVING!!!” Turns out he can talk like that in four languages. God help the world. Hee hee.

The snorkeling was wonderful. The first site was interesting—until the jellyfish came out. It wasn’t so interesting for this Pacific NW girl after that. The Australians and Vietnamese felt that they were tiny and no big deal. “Oh, they just come up and prick you a bit and then it’s over and they swim away.” Anthony got a good one on his upper arm, and he’d had enough of that site.
The second site was phenomenal. Some of the rocks and coral were so close to the surface that I had to be extremely careful as I swam over the top of it. I didn’t want to touch any of it with my fins. It was amazing to look at. There were so many colors, and some of it waved in the current so gently, like long trees in a mild breeze. There were some absolutely amazing shapes down at the bottom, too, of huge platter shaped coral with fingers coming out of it. The fish were beautiful, too, and I saw several that are also in Hawaii. I even saw a bunch of blue starfish! Better yet, we were the only boat there, so there were a whole 6 of us in the whole lagoon. It was incredible. The staff taught Anthony how to dive off the top of the boat here while I was away with my head under water. They had a ball.
After the 2 snorkeling sites, we puttered on over to the main Cham Island, where we had lunch. There was a fish baked in tinfoil, some calamari, (my favorite) some sautéed garlic spinach, (another one of my favorites) and several other dishes. The group went on and on about how fabulous it was. We thought it was very good, but we have to say that our old stand-by, Trinh-Trinh in GoVap district is still the best, right after the places that Ms. Ouahn takes us to eat! We even talked about her over lunch, because let me tell you, she knows the BEST places.

After lunch, Anthony went swimming and I took a little walk down the beach to quiz the huge group of kids at the end of it. It turns out that they were high school kids doing their one semester of military training, which included this day of beach training. One of the boys told me, “It’s the worst day of my life” and held up his shredded flip-flops. When I asked him what happened, he said he didn’t know; they just disintegrated. I offered him my girly-girl shiny gold ones, but he passed. Anyway, they had been sitting on the beach in a big square when we arrived, and we had watched some in-water maneuvering during lunch, so I asked them what they were doing. They had to swim from the beach to the boat in the water, then swim back to shore with their food (lunch). If they dropped it, they didn’t get lunch, I think. Then they had to cook their lunch (ramen) on the beach, which is what they were doing now. The one kid said, “I’m exhausted!” They were so cute.

Later, that same boat came and basically ran into the back of ours parked at the dock. I went to the back of the boat and watched as 5 kids came crawling and jumping from that boat onto ours, then ran to the front of our boat--as it was pulling away from the dock--then jumped one by one onto the dock. The last one in the line called out, in perfect English, “Sorry for the interruption!” and we all burst out laughing. It was perfect.

This was one of the best days ever! Whether you can swim or not, go snorkeling with Blue Coral Dives if you come here!!!