Today we went on a boat cruise called Mama Linh's Boat Cruise. It was supposedly started back in the day when there were few if any rules in Vietnam. Mama Linh had a boat and drove it around getting people drunk and high while cruising the ocean around Nha Trang.
It took off in popularity as people broke the first rule of Mama Linh's Boat Cruise's and talked about Mama Linh's Boat Cruise's to other people. Other companies soon copied the formula and everything became commercial and planned out. Fortunately though the price has stayed low and as such I didn't expect much.
As soon as we got to the pier to board the boat, our boat was pulled out to sea, without anyone on it, by other boats leaving the pier as the rope tied to shore snapped, sending the captain of our boat scrambling across the pier and into other boats to get to the boat and rescue it. The way the captain jumped from boat to boat so easily, suggested to me that this wasn't the first time he had done this.
We loaded onto the boat and headed out into Nha Trang bay. A 10 year old Vietnamese boy asked me in a very polite manner if he could sit next to me. The boy then became my friend for the rest of the boat cruise, talking with me and following me around. He was really nice, as 10 year old boys go and had really amazing English.
Our first stop was at the aquarium for 45 minutes. We had to climb through 3 other boats to reach the pier and then walked to the aquarium that is shaped like something from Pirates of the Caribbean.
The aquarium consisted of around 10 glass tanks, some the size of an aquarium you could have in your house. There were some larger tanks with sharks and these giant fish:
There was also an outdoor area where we saw this sea turtle:
It didn't take long to look at all the tanks and we were back on the boat. We headed to a floating dock with other boats where you could para-sail or jet-ski for an extra charge. Instead we went snorkeling with vintage 1970s masks and detached snorkels. The young boy had never been snorkeling before so he swam within a foot of me the whole time. The coral was really pretty and there were about 15 varieties of fish including angel fish.
We went back on the boat as it cruised to the middle of the bay where the boat stopped and sent all of the western tourists to the top deck and everyone else stayed on the main deck to have lunch. On the top deck, my shadow joined us along with an elderly Chinese man who was insistent on taking inappropriate pictures of the five British girls on our boat.
After lunch we were told to come back down to the main deck where all of the benches had been converted into a stage. The cook got out a plastic barrel drum kit and there were two guys playing guitar. The guide of the ship came out dressed as a woman in a wrap around towel with soup bowels as breasts. They played some songs for us, here is them singing a song called "Vietnam, Vietnam":
They then went to all of the western tourists and asked where they were from and had them get up and sing a song that the band had prepared for each country. I sang to "La Bamba" as the song representing America.
After the singing it was time to go swimming. I climbed to the top of the boat and shouted "cannonball" while jumping and creating a massive splash. The cook turned drummer transformed again into the party coordinator, floating around in a makeshift bar giving everyone free shots of rum with pineapple. "More, More More" he kept shouting at everyone. After drinking and swimming, apparently a Vietnamese tradition, we headed back to shore.
The whole day was all a little bizarre but was actually a lot of fun. Its probably hard to beat all of that for $7.
Check out the rest of the pictures here:
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