DOG is a sleeping man's worst enemy

Monday, June 14, 1999

I came to this conclusion after being awoken at three in the morning by the duel of the barking dogs, one of which was the family dog. They woke up the baby too, so the crying was fun to try and ignore too. I couldn't even yell at the dogs either, because I doubt they listen to English commands ;b

Eventually the dogs shut up and I got another hour of sleep. We had to board the van to Nha Trang at five in the morning, so we'd already packed the night before, of course. Another round of Aqua songs in Vietnamese, and that's where I first heard Celine Dion's love ballad song from Titanic in Vietnamese. Whoever sung the song in Vietnamese did it much better though ;b

The van showed up on time, and we all piled in. Even though it wasn't even daylight, people were already up and running about doing stuff. A little weird, but at least traffic was much less than it would've been. We stopped about an hour into the trip to get something to eat. I don't think it agreed with me too much, and being stuck in the car wasn't helping things any.

It was a ten hour trip or so - . I felt about to throw up the whole time, but I wasn't near as bad off as my cousin Co, who threw up every chance he got. Even growing up on a rocking boat, apparently he wasn't used to the sudden motions of a road vehicle. We got to Nha Trang, which is a town on the beach... the weather wasn't drastically different from that in Binh Duong, except there was a bit more of a salt breeze.

We stayed in a little hotel. It had a western-style flush toilet. It had air conditioning. I was happy. The others took a swim by the beach for an hour or two.

Co didn't like the smell of A/C, and he didn't want to go on another van ride, so he stayed outside while we went to see the rock formations further inland. Then we got some more stuff to eat which didn't get me quite so sick. I think it's worthy to note that twelve of us can usually be fed for under fifteen US dollars; stuff is fairly cheap in Vietnam, by American standards.

We came back to the hotel and slept. I saw an Internet cafe on the way back. Tempting, but no thanks ;b Tomorrow we head to Da Lat.

And we didn't do much else that night, except sleep. Had to get up early tomorrow since we're going on vacation!