If you follow my stuff you are probably aware of the fact that me and my group of friends go a little bit nuts for bowling. It was our favorite group activity and we took it to the next level by having championship belts, medal, made up a game called tag-team bowling, and had a stuffed animal turkey called the "gobbler" awarded to whoever gets 3 strikes in a row.
We were devastated when the ability got taken away from us by Covid back in April. It's hard to imagine that it has been that long but we are finally allowed to return to the lanes and we actually found out about it completely by happenstance.
A few DUMBO members were sitting a local bar one day when we overheard a random person a few seats away talking to a friend about how they "went bowling a couple of days ago" and how much fun it was. All this time our usual lanes that used to sponsor us has been telling us that the government had not given them the green light to reopen so we just assumed that this applied to all bowling alleys. Apparently the rule doesn't apply to all bowling alleys because this guy, who we previously didn't know, was absolutely correct. There was a bowling alley on the other side of town that was in fact open.
It's called Paradise Bowling and none of us even knew that it existed. They don't advertise or appear on maps programs and since it is on the other side of town an in a pretty run-down and unused shopping mall there wasn't much chance that we were ever going to stumble upon it. We were lucky to overhear that conversation that day. As it turns out this place has been open for over a month and I have no idea why the rules don't apply to them... maybe the rules don't actually exist and the other lanes is just using it as an excuse to stay closed? I can't imagine why they would do that but you never know in this place man.
We were basically the only people there: Only 2 other people came in the entire time we played so this can't be a great money maker for the owners of the lanes. The seating areas at Paradise Bowling is superior to our old spot as are the overall conditions of the lanes. I bowl with a "hook" so an improperly oiled lane can seriously fuck up my game. All of the lanes were properly and identically oiled. The machinery is also apparently newer because at our old lanes we would frequently get bad racks. We didn't have a single misrack the entire time we were playing at Paradise.
The staff were attentive, the hand dryers worked, towels were provided for each lane, the ball return machine always worked and also didn't throw the balls at you at high speed endangering your fingers and the music was at a reasonable volume - which is quire rare for Vietnam. Everything seems perfect so far, right? Well Paradise Bowling has seriously effed up in a very important way that will likely eliminate them from ever being our permanent stomping ground and I can't believe that it is like this
There was only 5 of us that went this time including myself and we seriously struggled to find bowling balls that we could fit our hands into. Some of the holes were so small that I can't imagine an adult human having fingers that small. This was true with the heavy as well as the light bowling balls intended for children. There was probably 80-100 bowling balls in the racks but we couldn't even find 5 with holes big enough for us - we had to share.
Now I realize that your average Westerner is larger than your average Asian just generally speaking but it's not like we are all a bunch of superhuman, Andre the Giant type people. We are just above average height and weight people. One of the members of our group is actually smaller than the average Vietnamese person yet even he struggled to find a ball his hand would fit in.
This is a really big problem and it is such a damn shame because this will make it impossible for us to ever have large scale events here the likes of which we had in the past where we would turn up with 30 people and occupy every single lane. It simply couldn't be done if we are sharing the 7 balls they have in the entire lanes that we could use.
We were all a bit worried about being rusty but in the end we were all quite surprised and impressed with how well we did. I know that a real bowler isn't going to think these scores are anything special but to us, we weren't really expecting to break 100 after so much time away.
The highest score of the day was 154 and as far as the skill level of the people I roll with are concerned, this is a very good score. We plan on going back next Thursday and every week after that. Next week we will have a Vietnamese person with us that can communicate with the staff about the ball issue. We are hoping that it is a just a question of there being some adult size balls in the back or something because if it isn't, we won't really be able to use this place.
In the meantime we are just delighted to be able to go and do this again and it will soon become the highlight of our weeks again.