River Ray Estates

After arriving to Vung Tau and waiting a while to be picked up, this guy named Dins (pronounced "d'n") picked us up and brought us to the resort. I had no idea it was so remote. It was in the middle of nowhere, and contrary to what I was told when half the payment for the room was required in advance, it was almost totally empty. There was a two-pod Swiss family with three young boys, who were later joined by a Vietnamese couple and their baby, who claimed to be related to them, I assume through marriage somehow, and no one else was staying there, that we could tell.

Here's the house they put us in. It's called Marigold, and is one of several wooden houses divided into individual suites. We got the top floor:

It overlooked this pond:

As well as this gazebo on the river:

After eating supper at the club house, we were shown to our room by flashlight, as it was dark already (we had forgotten about early sunset because it was so warm it tricked us into thinking it was actually summer). The room was funny. It had one double and a twin bed, with two bathrooms--one with a toilet and a sink, and the other with a shower and a sink. There was no balcony, per se, but actually the whole room was kind of like one big balcony, as there were three big doors that opened up over the pond, with railings.

Two people who didn't speak English went through a lot of trouble setting up a DVD player for us, only to end up giving us a bunch of CDs of Vietnamese music, and one DVD of Charlie Chaplin and Mr. Bean. Awesome. Mom and Amber were jetlagged, so they fell asleep around 8:30, even before the DVD people left. I woke them up twelve hours later for breakfast, which apparently we missed (no one told us breakfast was from 7-8). Since we were practically the only people in the resort, the kitchen made us probably the same breakfast they would've given us at 7:00--omelettes and baguettes, as well as the aforementioned wicked good coffee.

We had planned with Dins to go to a hot spring we saw in the guidebook he gave us, but before he left, he offered to upgrade our accomodations to a whole house, instead of just a room. We moved to Lily (the name of one of my mom's cats):

At the base of the house was a driveway with this sculpture:

To get to the club house/restaurant and the pool, we had to go past the driveway along a bricky trail, past this thing, which would seem to be a fountain, and may actually be turned on when there are more than 13 guests:

After some more path there is a bridge (not over water, but over thick underbrush and brambles and the like):

Then down those stairs (that's Amber up there) and over more path:

Here's a cool tree on the way:

And still more path:

Those poles in the above pictures, by the way, are guides for trees they're growing to make the place look more filled in in the future.

Past this little pool:

And finally to the open-air restaurant:

You may have noticed the observation tower in one of the photos above. Here it is again:

And here are a few views from the top:

I think I was the only one to go up there. Those other two seem to be afraid of heights.

Anyway, the pool was to the left of the restaurant. One one side there is a little kiddie pool, with what looks like it could be a waterfall:

Then the main pool in the middle, which was only waist deep the whole length:

It had two rowboats in it, which were fun for playing around or sitting and reading in:

That's the River Ray you're seeing in the background, by the way.

On the other side was a jacuzzi:

Remember my entry on sseokso, the rotten smile? If not, you should go back a month or two in my blog and read it. I think it's one of my most interesting entries. Here's an example of sseokso, hanging around the pool:

And apparently Joe Camel has made it out to Vietnam:

I have more pictures of the inside of our house, as well as the river and beach that the hotel is situated on, but I'll get to those soon enough.