Haiphong, vietnam

March 19th
Haiphong, Vietnam

Turns out the place is called Haiphong on the schedule, so I’ll go by that – though I really think it’s called Halong. But anyways, today’s plan was to follow around my friend Jay, the trombone player, on what he calls his “Uncle Jay Tours”. After explaining that he’s been to the port multiple times and having developed a now traditional itinerary, I thought it’d be fun to hang out with him. He called at 11 this morning letting me know the his tour was leaving, a tour consisting of Jay, myself, and his friend Neil, a musician from a different band on the ship. We took the tender ride from the ship into port and I got to see how beautiful the area really was. Despite the haze, the beauty of the land was just unbelievable. Again, these are things I’ve only seen in movies, and to see Vietnam in person in the area we were in was just great. So we got off the tender and made our way towards the first stop of Jay’s tour…a place to buy beer. Jay is an extremely heavy drinker, pretty much my opposite, which isn’t going to work out well for me. But hey, when the beer is only a dollar and safer to drink than the water, maybe it’s not so bad. From this tiny little shop. We continued on to what’s called the Dream Hotel, some place Jay frequents. The first part of the stop consisted of getting lunch at the fairly nice looking restaurant, which was a great choice with some really good food, not to mention extremely cheap. With our meals followed two more rounds of drinks, again something I was assured was the best choice anyway. After our meal began the real aim of the day, go upstairs in this hotel to the spa, where for $12 you can hang out all day in the sauna, steam room, Jacuzzi’s, showers, and get an hour long massage! So that’s just what we did, hung out in the spa area till we each went on for our massage. It was kind of nice though to just kick back and relax, considering how stressful this job can be…yeah, that’s the word, stressful. But hey, if it’s there, why not take advantage of it? Following that, we headed outside for the market where Jay and Neil wanted to do some shopping, which was interesting. Some of the things they were selling were absolute crap, but at the same time, there were a few nice things here and there that seemed worth haggling over, Something Jay did with every street vendor. And after a little while of that, we started to head back. We did, however, make a quick stop for food at a great local place, another one of those great places you only come across in real poor areas. At this tiny restaurant, if you can even call it that, everything we ordered was a dollar. From getting more beers to the fried rice and the spring rolls Jay ordered, everything we picked out was a dollar each, and really good. It’s somewhat difficult getting past the lack of cleanliness of these areas, but it’s part of the culture, it’s authentic, and that’s what I’m looking for.
We eventually left and made it back to the ship where we had two big band set’s to play. A lot of the band was upset cause it was only supposed to be one set, so I guess any work day that approaches two hours of playing (closer to 90 minutes) is a day I should consider long. Again, not a bad deal for a musician getting paid to see the world!
That’s it though for the 19th, tomorrow will be busy with boat drill, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to get off if ever, so we’ll see. Thanks for reading!