5/7 Vung Tao

After a late nite and a late morning, a few of us got onto a hydrofoil bound for Vung Tao, a beach town about an hour east of Saigon.  The excitement of my first hydrofoil ride quickly faded as an old dilapidated boat pulled up.  We boarded the beast to find no AC and broken chairs.  We did get to Vung Tao pretty quickly, jumped into the first cab we saw and set off for Daniel's cousin 18th floor apartment.  The apartment was lovely but quite a ways from town.  We all decided to do a bit of exploring.  The little back roads reminded me of the big island of Hawaii. We found a huge resort that felt very communist - more explanation later;).  Then walked around the mammoth complex to finally find the beach.  Ended up walking about four miles to what we though were beach restaurants but ended up being off season and very closed local resorts.  Along the way, we must have seen at least 100 jellyfish (and other unmentionables).  I'm not sure at what point I became so squeamish but every time I saw one I jumped and let out a little scream.  To say the least we were all ready for a good meal and a cold beer.  To put is succinctly, after about two hours of bad restaurants, more walking and many taxis we found a friendly bar with cold beer ... finally.