We woke up at 6am on our bus and felt relatively fresh as it was sunny and we had a good sleep. I'd found wifi on the bus and realised we were only 10 minutes walk from our guest house so decided to go straight there.
Luckily we found it relatively easily and our room was ready for us to check in way earlier than expected. We dumped our bags, found out we could book the Vinpearl park through reception and then went for an early breakfast kneeing we had a taxi booked for 9am to take us there. It felt so good to be so organised, getting things booked early in the day and knowing we would fit everything in, even after having got a night bus.
By 9am we were ready and excited for our taxi to the cable car. We arrived 10 minutes later and faced an hour long queue for the cable car. We sol discovered that British people really are good at queuing as we tutted and huffed as tons of people kept on blatantly queue jumping in front of us. Again, in a British fashion, we kept quiet and let them so as not to cause a fuss. Instead we entertained ourselves playing the alphabet name game which surprisingly made the queue go quite quickly. After a few tantrum moments when people invaded our personal space, we managed to get on a car and made our 12 minute journey to the island over the sea. It went quite quickly at first but it soon calmed down and it felt rather relaxing as we traversed across the bay.
On the other side, I switched to manic kid mode instantly and quick marched to the Aqua park with the other two in tow as clearly assigned adults for the day. We found a locker room for our bags and before we knew it, we had lilos in our hands and were running to the first slide which was a 6 man race on your front down a wobbly slide. It was quite fast, especially going head first, but I still didn't win.
We had our strategy to go from ride to ride in order, regardless of what it was so the next slide was 'Space Hole', a relatively sedate looking tube slide that ended in a hidden pool of water that dropped you out at the end. It looked simple enough, especially as the next slides along were called 'Kamikaze' so we assumed it would be a warm up kids slide.
We were so wrong. I think it was the most adrenaline filled slide of the park! After a 2 minute arduous climb up the metal stairs that cut into our feet (presumably designed to stop running children as it certainly prevented us from even walking without being in pain) we got to the top and Charlotte went first. We waved goodbye from the top, waited 20 secs, heard a Big Bang as she hit the hidden pool at the end and then I was waved forward for my go.
Nothing could prepare me for this slide. It was in a tube so pitch black, the water was splashing in my face and mouth so couldn't see which direction I was going without my contacts flying out and it was so so so fast. My stomach was left behind at the top as I raced down screaming like a little girl. The last 10 metres of the slide were a complete shock as we hadn't seen from outside that there was a really steep, death slide drop at the end so I was completely unprepared, having had my eyes shut the whole time, for the last dizzyingly fast mental bit before hitting the plastic of the hole at the end. I finally managed to squeeze my eyes open for a second before the first pool chucked me into the second pool of water. Gasping for breath I finally surfaced to see Charlotte laughing at me from the side. It turns out she was also as shocked as she had badly hit her head at the end. Knowing Gemma didn't like inside slides, we waited anxiously for her exit as shot out after me. Our mutually joint decision was 1) not to do it again and 2) choose a safer slide for our next one, not the kamikaze.
After several hours of fun on all the slides, we finally got changed and made our way back to the cable car. It had been an amazing day and we hadn't wanted it to end, despite the wedgies of the kamikaze slide and the pain of the steps.
We had to wait a while for the cars again, but made friends with a nice German couple in front who wanted to share a taxi back to seafront with us to save on costs. I'm glad we did in the end as the taxi driver tried to overcharge us and drove like a mentalist on the way back, beeping his horn every 2 seconds rather unnecessarily.
We then found a nice restaurant for us to have seafood in before returning to the hotel to sleep.