Beachseller with drool
Wounded turtle but alive
Basket Boat in waves

February 26th, 2011
We spent a good bit of the day at the white sand beaches near Hoi An. Round basket shaped boats floated by being push along by men using a large pole. We ate a very greasy lunch at a restaurant there which ended up not sitting well with me later that night. (My 2nd food poisoning in Vietnam – who would have thought?) Several times some beach sellers came up to us trying to sell us fruit, snacks, or other items. One came up to us three times was selling English language newspapers – drool was forming in bubbles by the side of his mouth.

Hoi An has a large number of disabled people, both physically and mentally, who live and work together doing arts and crafts. There are several NGO’s set up to help them out, including one by a friend of Vang’s who we met up with earlier in the day. This newspaper seller did not seem at all rabid, so we assume the drool was due to other issues. His persistence in trying to sell us one paid off – we bought a paper.

The paper has a story about a turtle that had been injured in Ho Kiem lake in Hanoi. This was the lake that we visited when we where there and knew of the legend where a giant turtle took a holy sword that had been used to drive out the Chinese invaders over 800 years ago from the hands of the famous warrior back into the lake to return it to the gods. This turtle it turns out is only one of three giant turtles of this species left, the other two being in a zoo in ironically, China. It’s age is guessed at over 200 years and the injuries it sustained were caused by other non-indigenous turtles of a smaller variety that had been released into the lake. We were assured that a vet was taking care of the larger one.