No more complaints about MY driving!!

For all of you who have had the pleasure of driving with me and are frequently scared, you should try riding in a car in Vietnam. I seriously thought I was going to die on so many occasions I quit counting!

Chris and I left for the beach in Mui Ne (a fab. little resort town like 200 km away from Ho Chi Minh City) on Friday afternoon around 4:30 pm - - and I can't even begin to describe the AWFUL driving that goes on here.

There are motorbikes ALL over the place - add crazy cars and rotten semi drivers with no traffic rules and you get a ginormous mess! People passing on the shoulder of the road, driving down the wrong side of the road, crossing the street haphazardly...At first it was a little fun, but then as we continued on and almost died a million times it was quite stressful!!

However, Chris is to be comended for paying attenting and getting us there and back safely!

We arrived at the beautiful Sailing Club resort and met a woman that Chris works with and her husband. They had been there for a while and had a prime spot for us on the patio overlooking the South China Sea. We drank some wine, ate a fantastic dinner and then headed out to a fun bar down the street where we consumed WAY too much alcohol, and met some new Vietnamese friends and one super sketchy German (seriously, what's with me and sketchy German guys?!?) who followed his true love (I mean is stalking her) from Germany to Vietnam (can you say crazy??!?!) - - anyway, he told us his tale and we proceeded to humor him and tell him how nice that was (only because we were wierded out and afraid, very afraid)...after we shut down that bar, Chris and I headed out with our two new Vietnamese friends to another club, but that was closing so we went back and reopened the bar where we had started.

I crashed around 2:30 and woke up at 7:30 (I had drunkenly scheduled a massage for 9 am) I went for a really crappy run on the beach and had breakfast and a lovely massage and when I returned to our room I crashed and realized that I really was still a little intoxicated. Chris had stayed out later than me and was in rough shape too - - we ended up getting down to the beach around 2 pm and ate lunch and layed in beach chairs for the remainder of day light.

Dinner was AMAZING Indian food - - the four of us ate so much, we ordered like 10 different dishes and drinks and our total bill was like $35 - - I'm still blown away by this...

We called it an early night on Saturday and this morning (Sunday) I got up at the crack of dawn (well way before dawn) - - my internal clock still is not on vacation time and while I'm not jet lagged at all, I was up at 4:15 am which is when I get up at home! So, around 5 am when I really just couldn't lay around any more I went down to the beach and sat there in total tranquility listening to the sea and being so content - - everything is so right in the world when I'm by a large body of water. I watched an amazing sun rise and when it was fully up I went for a fantastic run on the beach and had another massage.

We sat on the patio for a good chunk of the afternoon and none of us wanted to leave - this place is seriously amazing and the weather was perfect all weekend long - it was warm but really breezy and the water was unbelievable. We finally headed out and made it back to Chris' place alive, although neither of us wants to drive anywhere ever again...