Vacation Time!

The island is just wonderful. We showed up yesterday but I spent all day drinking so plugging into the internet was not high on my list of things to do. The beaches are absolutely breath taking. It's one of those places that you would imagine a celebrity jet setting off to for a hush-hush wedding. Yesterday we did a lot of swimming and ocean football, rode one of those giant water bicycles, laid in the sun, ate cheeseburgers and drank a lot. Unfortunately the Pina Coladas pretty much sucked but it was alright because I drank all sorts of other fruity drinks instead.

Here I am about to pass out asleep on the boat ride out to Rach Gia where we caught the helicopter.

The rockstar helicopter

A couple of scenery shots from the flight

Our hotel is wonderful - mostly because it has A/C which is pretty much the greatest invention ever! This is the view from my balcony.

So first thing this morning we got up and headed out for a boat that we chartered to go fishing. There were six Americans and about ten VNO going on the trip together. On the way we stopped at this place:

Turns out it's an American POW camp from the war. Basically this island was held by the U.S. and used for R&R and holding prisioners (yes seems a little paradoxical). So we had no idea what kind of museum we were going to. The VNO only told us that it was a prison so we were all a little confused about what we were doing there. Once inside there were all sorts of relics from the camp and photos. I was absolutely sick to my stomach (and not just because I drank too much yesterday). It seems that our hands were far from clean when it came to brutality during the war. There were statues that depicted a large, broad shouldered American torturing Vietnamese. I felt so horribly awkward and stupid and ignorantly arrogant. When I went to visit Pearl Harbor I was very bewildered by all the Japanese there, so I guess the tables turned on me today.

But after we'd left the POW camp we were able to cheer up quickly. We picked up the boat and headed out for fishing.

This is me, Jayme and the VNO colonel

We stopped to fish for a while but I didn't catch anything except for my thumb and my ring finger. It still freaking hurts. Of course the Vietnamese guys and the one Samoan we have with us caught fish.

This is where we stopped to buy crab for lunch since we didn't catch diddly squat.

Here's Mrs. Thu showing off a crab...mmmm yummy.

After lunch we swam in this bay for a while...

and then passed out in these hammocks :)

Oh and here's one more pic of me - that should satisfy the need to prove that I am actually here and not just downloading pics from the internet to post on here!

That's it for now. It's late and I think I want to finish up my vacation with laying in bed watching a couple episodes of Futurama and eating the delicious Oreos that I found at the market today. Sweet dreams!