This morning we
managed to get out a bit earlier, and were on the road to the beach
by about 10am. This time, however, we took a little detour, turning
off after one of the two bridges along the way to check out the
so-called 'vegetable villages', where a lot of the fresh produce is
grown to supply the local restaurants. We pottered around there for a
while, following the narrow paths through the market gardens and
houses and finally back to the main road.
We stopped again
when we reached the second of the bridges. Here there were some areas
where collections of sticks had been driven into the water – I'm
guessing as some sort of fish- or prawn-aggregation devices. As I
took a few photos, a woman paddled into view chasing her ducks across
the water to the near bank. Soon after, a beautiful kingfisher with
electric blue wings flew over to one of the fish-aggregators, stopped
for a while, and then dived down into the water, returning with a
prawn in its beak.
We then rode back to
Cay Me for lunch, stopping off on the way at a sweet little market
set up by some local women to sell their local products. There we sat
and drank Fanta while Sarah did some cartwheels on the lawn – upon
which we later saw a neat little lizard. After lunch, we rode back to
the main beach, where we parked our bikes, set ourselves up with a
couple of sun loungers and jumped into the ocean.
While we were in the
water, we couldn't help noticing the presence nearby of a couple of
white children – a boy and a girl about our girls' age - swimming
with their mother. We inevitably started chatting to them, in between
being battered about by the waves, which were a bit more violent
today. The kids all quickly made friends, allowing us adults to
retire to the sun loungers and share backstories. Sue and Matt, and
their kids Mitchell and Hailey (who were, indeed, the same ages as
our two), are from Chicago, and a few weeks into an epic journey of
their own that will take in 12 countries over ten weeks. We had a
great time comparing notes on travelling with children (they have the
added complication of both of theirs being coeliacs, which meant that
half of their luggage was taken up by gluten-free snacks) and
laughing at the idiosyncrasies of Vietnam – such as the guys who
kept coming around trying to sell us sunglasses, apparently oblivious
to the fact that we were already wearing, yes, sunglasses. (I hope
they don't mind me posting their photo of the kids playing – none
of mine really turned out.)
At some point during
our steadily beer-fuelled conversation (it was pretty warm), we
discovered that it was possible to order food from the beach-front
restaurants that owned the adjacent sun loungers and eat right there
on the beach. So, after the staff had set up the inevitable
kiddie-sized plastic table and chairs at the foot of our sun
loungers, we sat and ate noodles, rice and some stir-fries and drank
beer as the sunlight steadily faded.
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