Scuba Diving...and Cham Island

I spent my third day in Hoi An on a Scuba Diving tour to Cham Island...about an hour or so by boat from Hoi An. The boat ride to the Scuba site was great. It was so nice to be on the ocean and to get some much needed pollution free air and sun! The actual dive turned out to be kind of sucky though. I can easily say it's been the worst dive I've done so far. Due to a recent storm the visibility was AWFUL. I could barely see my dive partner, much less anything else in the water. We dove near a recently sunk fishing boat. I'm sure it's a pretty cool dive when you can actually tell what you are looking at. At one point my dive partner and I lost the rest of the group. After a couple of minutes of waiting for them we slowly made our way to the surface. We almost decided to scrap the dive right then and there. Fortunately/Unfortunately our dive master found out a couple of minutes later and we caught up with the rest of the group. Even though it was a pretty crappy dive it was probably a good experience for me. I'm really bad at sticking with my partner while diving. I've been known to see a pretty fish and take off. More than once I've lost my group. Obviously this can be very dangerous so at the very least this dive taught me a lesson on the importance of sticking with your buddy. (Oh by the way...my dive buddy was not only from the States but from Seattle and his name was Shaun....weird!)

After the first dive we had about a hour break before the second dive. While on break, I learned that the snorkelers on the trip were being ferried to the nearby Cham island which is inhabited by a very small fishing village. I decided to skip my second dive and go to the island. This turned out to be a very good decision as the village and island were so amazing to see. We walked around the island...literally through rice paddies to a small little Buddist Pagoda in the hills. It was lovely. We then walked about 2 miles to a private beach and restaurant where we were served traditional Vietnamese food family style. It was a lot of fun.

This is where my day turned quite sour. And I'm sure many of you have been just waiting for this story....I got sick....very sick! I started getting a headache and feeling nauseaus while still on the island but I was hoping maybe I just got a bit too much sun. So I took some ibuprofen and drank some water. Well this didn't help much because I got extremely sick on the boat ride back. I lost my lunch over the side of the boat...and then again and again and again over the next few hours. I was so out of it, when they dropped me off at my hotel they had to help me to my room. I have no idea what caused it...could have been a normal migraine...too much sun...sea sickness, lunch on the island..maybe all four. All I know is it was a miserable experience and after 17 hours in bed I'm still not feeling 100% today.

Well enough for now. I'm going to go find some 7up and go back to bed. Tonight I pick up all of my new clothes and tomorrow I fly to Hanoi!