In the morning, we
finished packing our bags, checked out of our room, left our bags at
reception and rode into Hoi An. As I mentioned a few posts ago, the
shop under the rooftop restaurant at which we ate sold movie
paraphernalia. This included some really nice 're-imagined' movie
posters – cool, 1950s-pulp-fiction-inflected versions of posters
for modern movies - printed on rice paper. I was keen to buy a
couple, and spent some time flicking through the extensive selection
picking out everything I liked the look of. I managed to whittle that
down to five – plus one more each for the girls – and we then
rode to find the post office, where we packaged them up and sent them
back to Australia.
We then returned to
the homestay (via an unplanned detour after we missed a turn and a
pit stop to buy some lychees for breakfast). Our transport was
waiting for us when we got back, so we loaded up our bags and set off
on the 45-minute journey to tonight's accommodation – the rather
bizarrely named Red Rosemallow Hotel in Da Nang, where Kate had
booked us an apartment. Da Nang is the largest city in central
Vietnam and an important port. It doesn't get a lot of Western
tourists as they tend to head straight for Hoi An, which is located a
bit further down the coast. Ang Bang Beach, where we swam and ate
dinner yesterday, is essentially a continuation of the beach adjacent
to Da Nang and we could see the city from across the bay when we swam
there.
When we arrived, our
apartment wasn't ready yet, so we crossed the road out front and had
lunch at a little Indian restaurant, which made a nice change from
all of the noodles and stir-fries we had been eating for the past
month or more. We then walked down to the beach for a swim. It was
really hot – 35C+ under a cloudless sky - and the sand was
scalding, so we ran quickly across to a roped-off area that was
evidently the 'patrolled' section. When we got in the water, we found
that the seafloor had an incredibly shallow gradient, such that by
100 metres or so out, the water - which was almost unpleasantly warm
- was still only up to my knees. We had to go such a long way out to
actually immerse ourselves that we were a bit nervous about the stuff
we had left back on the beach – if someone had wanted to steal it
there wasn't a lot we could have done about it. After a while, we
were joined by two young couples, one white, the other Vietnamese. I
noticed that the two women were holding hands the whole time and
eventually realised that it was because the Vietnamese couldn't swim
(which is pretty common here – quite a lot of Vietnamese people
drown at the beach each year because they can't swim), and the girl
was particularly nervous about being so far out. After we had been
swimming for a while, Sarah and Zoe started to complain about being
stung by something and Kate and I started to feel a few tingles, too,
so we all got out and headed back to the apartment.
Towards sunset, we
headed out to see if we could find somewhere to eat. It was then that
we discovered that our hotel is kinda out in the 'burbs. Although
there are shops, hotels and restaurants along our road and towards
the beach, if you head away from the beach and towards the centre of
Da Nang, it gets pretty quiet. Where there are gaps between the
buildings, they have often been turned into little market gardens
with a falling-down hovel attached and a few chickens scratching
about – a little slice of village life in the city. This was the
direction in which we headed, passing the odd little restaurant or
cafe here and there. There was also a bit of construction going on –
as there is in most parts of Vietnam – and we passed a guy about to
cut through a big pile of rebar with some sort of circular saw. He
was literally in the process of bringing the saw down onto the metal
as we approached him, but thankfully he paused as we passed – when
I turned back and looked, he started cutting, unleashing an enormous
spray of glowing metal sparks right where we had just walked.
We eventually
reached a t-junction – should we turn left or right? As always, we
were on the lookout for smoke from a barbecue, and after turning
right, we spotted some straight away – on the next corner there was
a guy cooking seafood on a big charcoal grill, adjacent to a big,
mostly open-air restaurant. We walked over and found big tubs filled
with water and live sea creatures of a variety of types, from snails
to crabs to fish. Thankfully, there was a young woman who spoke
pretty good English and she explained to Kate how it all worked and
what it all cost. Kate then walked around sticky-beaking at what everyone was eating, placed our order and we were soon sitting at a miniature table on
some miniature chairs tucking into some squid, prawns and fish.
One of the cardinal
rules of developing-world travel has always been: 'Don't have ice in
your drinks'. And certainly, when we travelled around Central America
back in 1992, the times I was sickest were when I stupidly broke that
rule. But at this restaurant, that rule just had to go out the
window. The kitchen facilities, such as they were, didn't run to a
fridge, so the beers and soft drinks were warm. They're served to you
with a glass mug and an ice bucket - you simply place a large piece
of ice in the mug and pour the beer over. So, if you want a cold
beer, and of course, given the weather, we did, ice is your only
option. The good news is that as far as we can gather, across much of
Southeast Asia, the ice production has been cleaned up and we've been
taking it for granted that the ice in our drinks will be safe. And so
far, that seems to have the case. We're still wary of salad, mind.
As we ate, I
realised that this was what I had been missing so far in Vietnam. We
were the only Westerners there – and clearly a distinctly odd sight
to the locals, judging by the open stares we received – but we were
welcomed in and accepted and were able to just get on and do what the
locals do (although I don't think we'll go quite so far as to turn up
for dinner in our pyjamas).
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