Kate and I got up
just after sunrise again this morning and went for another walk along
the beach without the girls (this time we both went for a swim) –
and found another giant jellyfish washed up on the sand. We had
breakfast at the Haven – banana pancakes and fruit salad – packed
and then went for another swim, again doing a bit of litter
collection on the way back. Later, when we mentioned our morning's
virtuous activities to Alex he told us to go to the bar at Big Tree
and get a free bowl of ice cream each for girls and beers for Kate
and me.
After checking out,
we sat around Big Tree chatting to the Australian family and then had
some lunch. We were very sad to leave – this was by far our
favourite place in Vietnam – but as we had already booked our train
tickets to Ho Chi Minh City, we couldn't extend our stay any further
(as the Australian family had). At 2.30pm, we went up to the main
road to get our taxi back to Quy Nhon. Alex had assured us that the
car was there already, but when we got to the road, all that was
waiting for us was an old woman with bare feet and a few bags of
rubbish. We put our bags down under the rudimentary bus shelter by
the road and settled in to wait, tension levels rising with each
minute without the car. The old woman tried to talk to us (in croaky
Vietnamese) then walked a few feet away, squatted down and had a pee,
and then came back and talked to us some more. Finally, at 2.45pm,
just as I was preparing to run back
to the Haven to find out what was going on, the car arrived
and we all quickly piled in.
We needed some stuff
for the train, as well as some general supplies, such as shampoo and
toothpaste, so we had organised for the cab to make a pit stop at the
big Big C shopping mall on the outskirts of Quy Nhon. We'd enviously
listened to stories from other Haven guests who had been there and it
didn't disappoint. We rushed up to the big, bright supermarket on the
third floor (by far the biggest and brightest we've seen in Vietnam),
but before we could get in, the security guards directed us to a desk
set up nearby in front of a bank of lockers. The mall is clearly very
new and the mall management is obviously incredibly theft-conscious –
it's clearly convinced that the locals will be overcome the
temptation to just walk out with everything they can carry. We had
virtuously brought along our own bags so that wouldn't have to use
any more plastic carrier bags, but we were forced to put them in a
locker, along with my cap. Not one to give in to petty bureaucracy
without a fight, Kate refused to hand over her handbag and began a
heated argument with the security staff about how unreasonable it was
make her relinquish it. Conscious of the ebbing time, the girls and I
went through to start shopping, and were soon joined by Kate, handbag
over her shoulder, but now securely encased in a plastic bag.
We quickly ran
around grabbing everything we needed, hopped back into the taxi and
continued on to the railway station in Quy Nhon, which proved to be
even smaller than the one in Da Nang – and hotter. The temperature
that day reached 38C and we heard that it was at least 40C in Hanoi.
Quy Nhnon's line is an odd little branch off the main north-south
line and our train started there. It's a slower way of getting to Ho
Chi Minh but arrives at a more reasonable time in the morning. After
sitting in the stifling waiting room for a while, we were finally let
out and onto the train, where we quickly settled in to our
compartment – our last for some time as the train line we've been
riding since London ends in Ho Chi Minh City.
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