Day 6 Roller Coaster of Emotions

After a week of hard work in Kien Giang, we decided to take a mini vacation for the weekend in Ha Tien, a city on the boarder of Cambodia and Vietnam. The car ride was only two hours away through the country side. As we got closer, we saw more and more rice fields. Our bus driver was awful. He did not know the area and had to ask directions multiple times. We finally got to our hotel Phao Dai on top of a mountain. The room rate was only 300,000 dong about fifteen dollars.

To settle our stomachs after lunch, we decided to go site seeing. The first place we went was Thach Dong, a temple built within the cave. As we stepped into the cave there was a 10 degree drop in temperature. Right away in the entrance there was a 10 feet painted wooden stature of Buddha with traditional lighted incense. We went inside a praying room filled with other gold plated Buddhist deities. We made the cardinal mistake of wearing our shoes and got yelled at by an old man. Then we got yelled at for trying to ring the bell. After the main floor their we went up a flight of steep stairs to look at the outside view. The view was gorgeous. All you could see were tree filled mountains in the distance in front of the rice fields. It was an extremely nice change of scenery from our normal city view. The last pit stop we made was to see the Cambodia and Vietnam boarder. There was nothing really to see and we didn't even leave the car so we left right away. We decided to leave right away because we were scared we would be kidnapped and our organs would be sold.

Then, we finally went to the beach. The beach had no sand and a murky gray color with black sand. It did not look very pretty, but we went in anyway. The water was really warm but there were no good waves to waves jump. So we just played volleyball in the water.

Once we got sick of the water we decided to try the rickety roller coaster. At first we were all scared to go on it. The initial rise up was completely vertical. On the way down, you had to manually accelerate and brake depending on your liking. It cost only two dollars so we decided to try it. The ride up wasn't bad. It was weird though that the people managing the ride did not force us to put our seat belts on. At the top, there was an amazing view. On one side you could see the ocean and on the other side you could see Cambodia and the casino on the border.The small top had a little cafe and the most of us ordered our favorite drink Bac Xeu, half condensed milk and half coffee. Before leaving the top, we fed the monkey in the cage its favorite drink, a strawberry soda called Sting. This monkey was so conditioned to drinking stuff given by customers it hated water and loved Sting and beer.

We finished the evening at the night market. It was extremely small. There really wasn't anything there other than clothes, not very cute at all, and small souvenirs. We also added pictures to the other blogs that everyone reading should look at. - Ann