Day 139. Kyle & Leanne joint blog.

No plan today.  No tour.  No Big Sauce. Not even Mild Sauce. It’s one of those days that we sort of feel guilty even reporting on. The reality is we weren’t on it and one of us is normally on it.   The planning that is. We admit it. Unfortunately, we (that’s the Royal We) didn’t get a boat tour booked in time for today.  Even a morning trip to the hotel activities desk didn’t inspire us with any tantalizing must-see, must-do activities.  We get momentarily excited about taking a seaplane ride over Halong Bay but it short lived as the activates clerk places a call and tells us, “No! booked all day.” It will just have to be a “slug” day.  

A slug day (no offense to any slugs reading this) is a day of doing absolutely nothing scheduled but letting the day lead you. Like enjoying the hotel pool and the amazing view of Halong Bay at our disposal. There’s time for everyone to study, reflect, read, find seashells, swim, play frisbee, draw and perhaps most importantly, for Kyle and Leanne to catch up on our Global Teen Adventures blog posts, Facebook posts and Instagram feeds.

After a slow and leisurely breakfast, we all rally down to the pool. The Vinpearl pool is the size of football field overlooking the 2,000-plus limestone islands that make up Halong Bay.  And any day that involves a pool automatically excites Kyle (as long as he doesn’t end up in the medic tent with a smashed nose) and especially one with a swim up bar pool bar.  At $120/night, this place is a steal. 

Kyle, Justin & Corey play games of water basketball PIG and all manage to stay injury free.  Everyone swims, plays water frisbee and enjoys the day.  The girls collect seashells on the beach on the bayside and Justin has mastered throwing the frisbee in a strong whipping wind.

Kyle is hanging out at the pool bar when a guy in his 20s comes up to him, sticks out his hand, beaming a smile and stands there just waiting. Usually this would be done in conjunction with a greeting such as “hi, I’m bob, nice to meet you?” or “Are you from America?” But this guy just stands there smiling and saying nothing.  Kyle returns the handshake, introduces himself and they get to chatting. The guy is from Poland and his English is somewhere beyond tourist conversationalist and semi-fluent but he seems really eager to engage in an English discussion. Kyle gets into the whole “travel the world” story that by now usually results in the teens immediately cringing and subsequently dispersing.  

The conversation is amusing as it is a series of non-sequiturs and random stream of conversational consciousness.  Leanne joins in and we are talking about SE Asia traveling, when he sees two women sunbathing on lounge chairs across the pool and goes ballistic.  The best we can discern from his rant is that the two woman are Russian and he hates them, well because…they are Russian. Go figure.

We try to steer the conversation back to travel (safer ground).  He tells us that he has travelled to dozens of islands on cruises up and down the African coast and here in Asia and Dubai is one of his favorite hang-out spots.  Hmmm…a twenty-five year old guy from Poland who travels the world and hangs out in Dubai – Kyle decides it would be best not to open up the can of worms of asking what he does for a living.  The travel conversation is going well and then all of the sudden, he is going on and on about his grandmother’s recipe for pierogis.  Must have missed the sign for that turn-off in the conversation.

He speaks in sentences that are 50 percent Polish words and 50 percent English words (Pol-glish?).  We have to concentrate really hard and keep the confusion at bay as we listen and try to react.  A huge smile and laugh usually works in this situation as we learned from Bemba in Tibet.  

But there’s another interesting twist to the Polish guy’s linguistics. Every time he can’t remember the English word he needs to make his point; he loudly screams the “F-bomb” and shakes his fists up and down as if that will help his brain’s linguistic recollection of the word quicker. The teens have distanced themselves from this dude thirty minutes ago as they are wise enough to follow the “don’t talk to strangers” rule and the especially now apropos in this situation, the “don’t talk to strangers speaking half-Polish, half-English and screaming F-bombs.”  

Kyle and Leanne however look for an appropriate out of the conversation.  The Polish guys is rambling away and comes to one of his now-familiar pauses to scream the F-bomb and shake his fists; however this time, he abruptly turns around leaves the pool bar without finishing his sentence. Apparently, he decided it was too frustrating an exercise trying to remember so many English words so he makes his exit as strange as he made his entrance.

The teens want to plan a sunset early dinner so we put them in charge of finding and arranging it.  Late afternoon meant more Amazing Race episodes shot in Split, Croatia and Switzerland, both places on our tour. We are so hooked on Season 31.

We dine at the Pavilion restaurant in the hotel as it is built over the bay. We have the entire outside deck to ourselves.  Peaceful yet fun family time. Walking back from dinner, Leanne shares that “the only thing missing from this hotel is a fun vibe. There’s just nothing going on here.”

Then immediately:  BANG! POP! FIZZ!  

These sounds were coming from the beach and as we whip around our necks, it looks as if the beach is on fire.  As we get closer, we realize it’s a Korean guy with something resembling a mini blowtorch dancing to K-pop tunes with 20 or so other middle-aged people.  Perhaps they are from the Materials Engineering conference being held at the hotel and this is his seminar?

It didn’t seem officially sanctioned by the hotel, but they were having a blast. Quite Literally. Just another lesson broken by adults today: “don’t play with fire.”  Just hand this crew some crayons and a wall, and you can just guess what might happen next — an adult-rule-breaking trifecta. 

So the hotel vibe went from “None to Fun” in 10 seconds flat, and all it took was a blow torch,  a boom box and few burnt arm hairs to heat the place up!