This week started out with some gardening in Ho Chi Minh City. We visited four different gardens across the city and spent the day planting herbs, making tea, and trying mystery fruits. We closed off our gardening sesh with a rap battle led by Sam and Audrizzy. Our new friend Vie even spit some rhymes of her own.
The next morning we set off on our next adventure through Nam'. The plan was to take a ten hour bus ride to Nha Trang to start our scuba certification class. By this point in the trip, ten hour bus rides were nothing to us, so we weren't to worried about our day of travel. When we got on our bus it seemed too good to be true. We had a private bus with air conditioning , room for us and all of our stuff, and seats that reclined into beds. It was too nice and had worked out much too easily. It turned out that it was too good to be true. After abut 6 hours on the bus we stopped at a remote bus station in the middle of the Sahara desert. What was suppose to be a ten minute stop,soon turned into an hour, then two. Traffic began to back up on the road we had been on and we finally found out why we were stuck here. Apparently the town was protesting a nuclear power plant and was blocking the roads. On finding this out, many of us wanted to go join the protest, but weren't allowed to because it was seen as risky behavior.Instead we started up an ongoing card game of president which lasted for about 4 hours. Finally, around 12 that night , our bus slowly got moving. We woke up the next morning in Nha Trang, took some espresso shots and powered through our scuba class.
After getting a good nights sleep and learning about everything that could possibly go wrong while scuba diving, we took our exam, which we all passed. Audrey, who had been freaking out over the course of our class, passed with the highest grade, a 98%. That afternoon, we finally got our fins wet in the pool learning some basic scuba diving skills. While the rest of the group was getting certified for their 18m certification, Joe, Hannah, and Ole' Greg were getting certified for their deep water advanced certification.
The next morning we all got to try out our scuba skills in the ocean for the first time. We spent a few hours under the sea learning some last minute skills and swimming with the colorful fish of Debbies Beach and Seahorse Bay. The following day we got to spend scuba diving and snorkeling in the crystal clear waters of Madonna Bay. We ended the day with red faces and smiles. Also, a few possible cases of the bends . We all survived our scuba experience and are now certified divers. We are now spending our last day relaxing in Nha Trang and catching a few last rays before we head to Hanoi.