Vung Tau at the beach

What a day! Arin and I were invited to the home of a local music teacher.  Yesterday while I was at the river eating my sticky rice, Thang Su had introduced himself by offering me some raisins out of a new pack he was opening.  After a long discussion, I received an invitation to his home, so today, he had his neighbor collect us in a car and take us to his home where we commenced to sing and dance, accompanied by his 25 year old son, his female neighbor Dung, who was my age and spoke pretty good English, her 35 year old son who happens to own a vegetarian restaurant, and her 4 year old son..  After a couple hours of singing, dancing and of course eating, Thang Su asked me a question which I thought was an invitation to visit the local temple/pagoda.  I accepted the invite because my coworker Lydia had extolled the virtues of a local temple and had stated that it was difficult to visit, due to it being out of the way.  I tried to invite Lydia to come also, but obviously, I did not overcome the language barrier because not only did we go without Lydia, but we also did not go to a temple. We went to the beach. As we were driving and driving and driving, each time we passed a temple, I would think, "This has to be the one!" Needless to say, we were not visiting a local pagoda, we were visiting the Pagoda Beach Club which is 2 hours away!  By the time we drove the 35 miles and stopped for vegetarian food, we finally arrived at the beach about one hour before sunset, at 4:30pm.  This place was very nice.  It was relatively clean.  It had a restaurant and tents which one could rent.  Dung informed me that 2 week vacations here are common.  One can also rent chairs by the hour as did we. The water was believably warm.  I used to say that Hawaii was like a bathtub, but it does not compare to Vung Tau!  Thang Su serenaded us with his guitar while the waves literally sparkled with the light from the full moon.  It was a very lovely, unexpected day.