Back before Covid shut down the lanes for nearly 8 months DUMBO (The DaNang Underground Mental Bowling Organization) had reached so far and wide that the Lotte Mart lanes would reserve the entire bowling alley for us and not allow anyone else, foreigner or Vietnamese, to play for those 2 hours. This was because we would bring 30-40 people with us, occupy all of the lanes and drink their refrigerator dry of beer in those 2 hours. It was a big money maker for them and a lot of fun for us.
We have only been going back for 3 weeks now, but the interest is already gaining momentum a lot faster than I thought it was going to. Our first week I expected 10 attendees at the most and we right around that much, word spread, and the next two weeks we have had near 20 people. I fully expect that we will return to our former glory very soon as everyone has nothing but good things to say about the entire process.
We were able to pull together a few of the old awards that we had from the old DUMBO but unfortunately most of the medals have disappeared in the shuffle that saw most of our original members leave Vietnam for other countries.
The old women's belt (the belt was old, it isn't a belt for old ladies) has become the ONLY belt because there were so few women in the first 2 weeks that we didn't see the point in having a women's division at all. We were terribly wrong about that because on week 3 there were more women than men in attendance. Girls like to bowl as much as boys do and it was nice to see so many new faces in the crowd and we were able to fill up 6 lanes and still bowl comfortably.
A lot of the new people don't really understand the "courtesy rule" where you are meant to wait for the people who are bowling on either side of you rather than just rush up and ruin their concentration. Not being racist here, but this seems to be more of an Asian violation as they don't seem to really mind it. For me, it is extremely distracting and we'll just keep letting the violators know and hopefully eventually it will stick in. I had to stop my approach multiple times last week because of these violations.
The crowd wasn't huge, but we did see a pretty exciting championship match that saw our current champion successfully defend his belt 2 weeks in a row. He also managed to win the "gobbler" which is a squeaky toy shaped like a bird awarded to whoever can manage 3 strikes in a row. Myself and one other person nearly obtained this highly sought-after trophy that is worth 50 cents as well, but we both fell short on the third ball knocking down 9 pins instead of striking.
I performed terribly in my first game because I bowl with a right-to-left hook and if the lanes are not oiled properly the hook doesn't work. Well, ok, it still works but it works too well and it becomes nearly impossible for me to hit the head-pin which of course is necessary for a strike. In the second game I stopped trying to fight the strength of my curve and instead altered my approach and was able to find my sweet spot and pulled off a relatively good 2nd game. Good enough in-fact, that I beat the new all-time high score by one point as I rallied in the 9th and 10th frames
If you bowl 10-pin at all, you are probably aware that 150 is NOT an epic score and I really don't expect it to remain as the highest score for very long. Before we were forced to shut down DUMBO in April of last year, the highest overall score was 223 and while it will take a while, I think we will return to that sort of scoring in a month or so.
This Thursday we head back once again and I can already hear rumblings in the community about how people are really enjoying it. We have also had a few veteran members that are going on other days to hone their skills in preparation for gameday. This has once again become my favorite day of the week in Da Nang.