Viet Nam Plus 3: Beach Day

We started early, with the bus leaving at 7am. We had about a 3 hour drive to the beach. We went to the coast of Vietnam - the Eastern Sea (also known as the South China Sea). It was great to have a day set aside for relaxation, and I know many of us were excited for that. I slept on the bus, so the ride flew by.

Before we went to the beach we climbed up a ton of stairs to the top of a cliff near the sea, where a statue of Jesus was with his arms outstretched. The stairs were surprisingly difficult to climb, but my newly purchased Vietnamese rice hat made the journey a little more enjoyable. When we got to the top, the view made the trip very well worth it. We got to climb up into the Jesus statue, and stand on his shoulder area to get the full view.

I know this blog has me saying over and over "best ____ ever, coolest ____ ever, etc"... but this view was so great that when I was stepping up through of Jesus' armpit onto his shoulder (going from inside the statue to outside), I made a weird little squeal or something because of the spectacular beauty that I was seeing. Not my manliest moment of the trip. The pictures are here, but they really do not show how great it really was... that was just something that couldn't be captured on camera.

We then went to the beach, where we spent the rest of the day. We relaxed, swam in the ocean, and had great food. The section of the beach that we were on was very pretty, but I forgot to take alot of pictures because of how hard I was relaxing. We had alot of good food for lunch, pretty much some standard Vietnamese dishes that we've had before, with some clams thrown in the loop today. I did get a little sunburn, but its probably because of sweating off some of the sunscreen I put on.

For dinner, some of us were craving hamburgers, so we asked Bryan (the other faculty member on the trip) where to go... and he told us about this place called Soul Burger. I was so happy because it was the fattest burger I've had in a few months, so it really hit the spot. Before we left, the owner even came out and talked to us for a little bit about our trip and his move to Vietnam.