It was recently announced that my local museum is going to move so I was kicking around the idea of hosting a field trip complete with school buses and maybe groups and 'chaperones' to go to the museum before it does. Thus provided the seed for this weird dream.
I have just landed in Vietnam and the excitement is eating me up. This is my first international 'field trip' that I have put together and I feel like I have really gone all out for my customers. My 'chaperones' are expats who have spent significant time living locally and have varying interests/expertise from the best night life available to the best food and least touristy areas. Best of all is the unique destination we are heading for which all of my chaperones are quite well versed with, you can't live here and not give it a try. Something that likely couldn't ever be done in America or anywhere other than a very closed off corner of the world. I think this may be the trip that allows me to expand my little side job into a career with permanent employees.
We gather the group of 30 or so people at the doors of the airport when I am informed our transportation has arrived. I found a local company with a school bus so we could get to our destination in our typical fashion. Its only a 30 minute ride from the airport with traffic, I was told, so I'm not too worried about how uncomfortable a school bus will be on the Vietnamese streets. As we go outside, our ride is unmistakable in the stream of local traffic, our large yellow school bus pulls up. At least the front quarter of it does. The back section looks like something out of Mad Max or Top Gear. Everything has been removed to create a flatbed and on that flatbed is the most enormous section of a tree I have ever seen. I do my best to mask my terror as I think that after just stepping off the plane this adventure has already turned into a headache. I quickly jump on to talk to the driver with my chaperone that helped set up this transportation and we come to the conclusion that it will be best to just play this off as part of the adventure and tell everyone to hop on and take their seat on the tree and hold on tight.
As we are rolling down the road, we see our vehicle isn't too much of an oddity but the 30 Americans hanging off the tree are. Every time we are stopped, people flood around the bus to sell things, talk and generally gawk at us. Its quite a bit of fun for all of us so I am thinking that this bus actually worked out quite well... until I noticed an upcoming rail bridge over the road. It seems quite low. Too low. The street is much too narrow to turn around and there is nowhere to turn off to avoid it. I tell the driver to stop, much to the chagrin of the traffic behind us, and tell everybody to get off the tree and crowd into the front section of the bus. We then go as fast as we can at the bridge and sure enough the tree was too big and the top foot or so of it is sheered right off. The driver isn't pleased to have lost a portion of his cargo but I'm thankful (and amazed) that everything worked out so well. The remainder of our trip to our hotel is uneventful and, most importantly, all of my guests had a great time and will talk about that lucky fiasco with their friends, my future customers.
The hotel is run by a major western hotel conglomerate so I expect it to be the easiest portion of the trip and indeed it is. Until it is my turn to check in. They inform me that they have no reservation for me and that they are fully booked. Inconvenient but not the end of the world, one of my chaperones agrees to have an extra bed sent to their room for me. So we are there, no major hiccups, great. The next day we can try out the main attraction but until then we scatter to the winds.
None of us wake up very early the next day since this is a vacation after all and we were all out and about until quite early in the morning but a free early afternoon brunch is enough to get everyone present to head to the main attraction together. It is adjacent to the hotel so there are no worries about transportation or people not enjoying it and wanting to do something else. Being the one who set this whole trip up, I'm among the first group to get a turn along with our most experienced chaperone.
We put on an all-encompassing body suit with a small oxygen tank and are given a detailed explanation of the most video game-like experience in the world. You travel through a complex system of tubes of streaming water, complete with sea scenery and wildlife. Whether you want to race or enjoy the scenery is up to you but you only get 10 minutes or so per turn before they come and get you to lead you out so the next group can go and not have to worry about smashing into any stragglers from a previous group. Tubes open into 'changing stations' at regular intervals where you can choose from different types of tubes while enjoying a new kind of scenery, all while still remaining underwater. Some tubes are faster and meant for the adrenaline seekers while others are slower for those more interested in enjoying the serenity of the ride.
Always having a need for speed, I'm more interested in the details of the faster tubes. I'm informed that in the faster tubes, water is pumped in more quickly and where I see green lights, there will be additional jets of water, blue lit areas give you the option to press a button on your suit that will jet oxygen out of your tank for additional speed and if you touch any red lit areas of the tube, your suit will be electrified if you come into contact with anything for the next 30 seconds, useful for temporarily incapacitating your opponents if you are racing. That last one sounds pretty terrifying but all-in-all this sounds like it is going to be as amazing an experience as I had hoped. As we are just about to enter the ride, the chaperone needlessly says that we shouldn't do any racing our first time in or we might hurt ourselves. We agree to stick to the mid-speed tubes and keep any competitive spirit contained for now.
Entering the ride was like stepping into a new world. A huge tank with numerous types of fish and sea creatures of all types and at the opposite side of the tank, three tubes labeled fast, middle, and slow. We head toward the slow tube to start and find ourselves in a completely different environment, an estuary theme complete with otters at play. As we go by they come along and include us in their play, swimming circles around us and bumping into us. The chaperone says we can't spend all of our time in the first tube so we continue along but one of the otters follows us.
At our first changing station, the otter leads us to the mid-speed tube with river-like scenery and it seems to like the ride as much as people do. The first green lit jet boost is a lot of fun as we all went tumbling around since we weren't used to the hydrodynamics, to the guffaws of our chaperone who slid through the water like a dolphin. In a shortly following blue lit area, the chaperone turned around and released oxygen so we could catch up and knocked me into a red lit section of the tube. When I regained my composure I swam as fast as I could toward the chaperone to get them with a shock but I didn't look around to see if anyone might get in my way. I was filled with dread when I felt something impact my side which could only be the otter. As I turned I saw it writhe briefly while it exhaled its air before going motionless.
Then I woke up.
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