Sea Urchins in Vietnam
Sea Urchins wedged among live coral
Chocolate Chip Sea Stars line the ocean floor
Today I revisited Starfish Beach (Rach Vem) on Phu Quoc Island to design a new tour based on what I’ve learned in my past two visits there. I hired a boat to explore some of the area and to go further down the beach - well away from all the tourists. The boatman took me to a gorgeous beach that’s only accessible by boat as it connects to the national park on the island.
In shallow water throughout the area are hundreds of thousands of sea stars! They number so many I felt like it was the equivalent of looking at the night sky projected onto the ocean floor! We also explored some live coral that’s home to tons of sea urchins. 
The new tour plan includes snorkeling at the coral, harvesting some of the sea urchins to grill along with a seafood lunch on this stunning beach and, while the food cooks, guests can go commune with all these starfish! Check out the videos of the sea stars and sea urchins as well as photos of the beach. I can’t believe this tour doesn’t already exist but, at least for my group, it does now! It’s gonna be a great tour day! 
(Apparently Facebook is only allowing me to upload one video at a time and no photos along with it so I’ll post after this with the rest of the videos and photos)
Hundreds of Red Starfish!
Check out this amazing experience I just had at Starfish Beach on Phu Quoc island, Vietnam! As you can see in the video, this beach is very appropriately named!
No matter how many times I come to Vietnam, it’s wonders never cease. There’s always something new to discover!
Here’s a 10 second time lapse I made of Vietnam’s newest travel destination, the Golden Bridge. I love the way the clouds lift at the end to reveal blue skies! Also, there appears to be a guy who jumped the fence down below and climbs up on the right-hand! I didn’t even see that at the time that I made the video. So cool! Now I have to go back and do that too! LOL
Meet my friend San Gio Ba. She is a Ha Nhi woman who lives in a tiny village in Vietnam’s northern mountains bordering China. Her tribal group originally came from Tibet hundreds of years ago before migrating to Vietnam.
There are many fascinating customs among Ha Nhi but one that drew me to them were their beautiful costumes and particularly the extremely unique headdresses worn by the women and the hats worn by the children. I’ll address the children’s hats in a different post but in this video you can observe this exquisite women’s headdress and how it is worn. Enjoy!
The dance my Lo Lo friends performed for me tonight is the same one they perform in their annual Corn Harvesting ceremony which will take place in a few weeks once the corn harvest is complete. The dance depicts various actions that take place in the harvesting of corn. First picking the corn and tossing it into the bamboo backpack baskets. Then cutting the stalks. Then bundling the stalks and loading those onto the backpack baskets.
This is my friend Xuyen, a Lo Lo woman, showing me the steps of putting on the Lo Lo costume.
Here is a video from that fascinating Len Dong ceremony.
