It was very late by
the time we made it downstairs this morning – it had been raining,
so we had a leisurely breakfast of tea and crackers in our room and
didn't go down until we were good and ready. The homestay has bikes
that you can use for free, so the plan for today was to ride out to
An Bang Beach, which is about 15 minutes ride in the opposite
direction to Hoi An. We tried Sarah out on one on the quiet street
outside the homestay, but she was far from confident enough to ride
with traffic out in the real world, so we put the girls on the back
of a bike each and set off.
When we got to the
beach, a series of middle-aged women noisily directed us towards
their bike parking lots by the side of the road - bikes are banned
from the beach-front area, and enterprising locals charge riders a
small sum to park their bikes under cover nearby. It was lunch time
by now, so we wandered along the beach front restaurants trying to
find one that we liked the look of. There wasn't much to choose from,
nor much to distinguish them – indeed, two of them had exactly the
same menu (not just the dishes, the menus were actually identical in
every way) – so we just picked one that looked half decent and sat
down to a reasonable meal (apart from one prawn that just didn't
quite taste right and I hastily spat out) looking out over the water.
When we were done,
we walked down the stairs to where the restaurant had set up a
collection of sun loungers on the beach. The deal was that you could
use them as long as you bought a drink or some food, so we were
sorted. Although the rain had stopped, it was still overcast, but the
water was still plenty inviting as it was rather hot and humid (and it felt like quite some time since we had been to the beach). Once
the girls were in the water there was no getting them out – they
stayed in for the whole afternoon. Eventually, however, it was time
to get back to the homestay. The woman looking after the bikes
half-heartedly attempted to rip us off, but soon enough we were back
in out room and showering off the salt and sweat.
Suitably refreshed,
we walked into Hoi An, stopping on the way, at Sarah's request, to
have some more of the pork rolls we'd had yesterday – this time
sitting on some plastic kiddies' chairs in someone's front yard. We
then walked along the waterfront looking for somewhere to eat –
eventually settling on a place with lots of geckoes on its sign (not
because of the geckoes, mind), where we had a pretty average meal.
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