Wow, Steve got up with a big smile on his face this morning, not sure what happened, but he is full of energy. Probably the sleeping pills he took last night did some magic and he probably just needed to get a proper sleep, which obviously worked. He doesn´t even know, that we were chasing a kitten around the room in the middle of night and that it got comfortable under Steve´s bed and we couldn´t get it out. Haha such a fun time!
Today is our “lazy beach day” – OMG we are being more lazy than active during this trip. We packed my little beach bag and all tired and sick, with terribly blocked nose walked next door from our hostel for a breakfast (fried noodles) – we don´t have any breakfast for free this time and the menu is quite pricy, so have to search for other options.
We stop by a pharmacy on the way to the beach and buy some more overpriced Strepsils and some tissues – my nose is like a broken tap. When we get to the beach, we pay for a beach bed, umbrella, towel and one drink combo for whole day. I have to make it as much pleasant for Steve as I can. He isn´t really beach kind of person.
Luckily he got his book and wifi (haha ohhh yeaaah, I keep telling you, that there is a wifi everywhere in Vietnam, even on the beach!) It is 35°C in the shade – not even a little breeze, damn we are sweating so much! Even the sea is quite warm, clear water is nice and welcoming. No waves though, it is like a big lake. Well, we cannot have everything, can we?
Have no idea if it is because of the sun and heat, but my sinuses are getting much better and taste and smell are coming back. I am so excited every time I smell someone´s sunscreen or cigarette smoke (I wouldn´t believe I would ever write that :-D. )
We can see many boats on the horizon – some of them are fishing, other ones are full of tourists and just sale around and between the islands. They look like little toys.
There is a lady walking around with fresh fruit all the time. When she comes for the fifth time, I cannot resist any more and get me the sweetest pineapple ever. She cuts it for me in an amazing shape – yummy! So good when my taste got finally back I have to fully enjoy it!
After a several hours of beach chilling we got back to the hostel and took refreshing shower. We are planning to go to the centre of the town. It is about 35 mins walking from our hostel, but there is no rush, so why not.
We are slowly walking on the dusty sidewalks. When those disappear we are forced to walk on the road – trying not to get hit by some crazy local driver.
You should see the mess on the sides of the road. Some lands between houses are like a junkyards, where all the people without thinking discard everything you could think of. And they live next to this places – they are very good at ignoring it.
You can see many massive unfinished buildings and hotels. Who knows, if they are actually building it now, or if it will stay unfinished forever. It looks like from a horror movie.
When we finally get in to the busy part of the town, we are a bit disappointed with the prices of food. Obviously touristy place. There are many beautiful restaurants, with large aquariums full of fresh seafood of all the kinds. One of them even has a water snakes. Crazy!
Truly the price is not that bad, for example $13 NZD for a lobster. But while we can be happy with a meal for $2 NZD, we feel pain to spend so much. So we just wonder around and stare into other people´s plates. Ohhh how mouth-watering.
In the end we find one little kitchen in a less busy alley. Prices are reasonable, so we order “Noodles” – hard to say, how it will be prepared, as there was nothing else written, so we sit down and wait for a surprise, hoping that our meal is going to be edible. Some young girls sitting by the table next to us have some funny looking messy food with rice. Well lets hope, our food will look more yummy.
Haha and guess what?! Ohhh yeah, we got a bowl of Vietnamese noodle soup, what a surprise! It seems, that our soup diet continues. 😀 Well, this food never disappoints me, but truly it is slowly getting our through our ears (I mean, we are starting to be sick of it :-D).
The money we saved on the cheap meal we spend on a “Fried icecream” :-D. Sounds funny right? But yes, it exist! And it is so yummy!
I would´t believe, how long is the way back to the hostel, never ending!!! We were pushed by hunger, when we walked to the centre, but now there is nothing to be excited about – the hard beds are not really a thing to be happy about. It is dark already – it gets dark here around 6pm every day. Funny how it works around the equator. Only around 12hours of day light all year around.
In the end we have a glass of beer each at the roof top bar of our hostel – that should help us with falling asleep I hope.
I believe, you can get use to anything, even extra hard beds. Well, what else can you do? When I wake up, it seem that my runny nose just disappeared. Miracle!!! I was getting ready for 7 days of struggle. (We say that runny nose lasts 7 days without a doctor and one week with the doctor.) But this was so fast! The fastest runny nose process I have ever had – 36 hours. Even Steve was fighting with it much longer.
I think we are finally ready for some adventure and adrenaline, so we are renting a scooter for $8 NZD for 24 hours – that sounds like a good start, heh? 😀 We get dressed in long sleeves – we heard some painful stories about people getting terribly burned on the bikes, so we don´t want to risk it.
Steve is getting use to our new toy quite quickly. He is thrown into this jungle of terrible drives and that is sooo scary! There are no rules!! We are zigzagging among idiots. We even have to stop to find a horn – we realized, we cannot survive without it! The probability of dying is much higher without beeping haha!!! So after all the stories about “beeping idiots” we happen to be one of them.
We believe that most of these drivers don´t even have a driving licence, because they have no clue about the rules. They cross your path without warning or even checking their mirrors (if they happen to have any).
Steve is a bit stressed on the beginning and I don´t blame him. (He is my hero!!!) People driving in an opposite direction is absolutely normal thing, they smoke their cigarette, dealing their phone calls, chatting with people on other bikes. Haha they are able to do all at once. 😀
We even see and accident. Little baby lying in the middle of pavement with very upset mother and crowd of people around. You can see many families driving with their babies in arms, with no helmets or any kind of protection, so they are asking for something like this. What a terrible situation!
When we get out of the city, we stop by one of the little kitchens – I believe, there aren’t many tourists stopping by to have a lunch here. The man cannot speak a word of English, but we are willing to risk it. We are firstly trying to communicate, even through the Google translator, but the man keeps shaking his head. “Well bring us whatever, we will eat anything you bring us.” we are gesticulating. He is a bit unsure, but after a while he disappears in his little kitchen. And you have a chance to guess only once! What are we having for lunch this time? Yaaaay, winner!!! Vietnamese beef noodle soup! Of course! 😀
While sipping this brunch, we are realizing that we are getting to be masters of chopsticks! At some places, you are not able to get any other cutlery and their spoons are not very good with these noodles. First time in my life, I can even keep up with Steve and his eating. 😀
It is much happier to get on the road with full tummies, even the traffic got much easier, so much more pleasurable. We were planning to go up north, but we somehow realized, that we have managed to change the direction to south. We must be still confused from the southern hemisphere or what. 😀 Oh well, it is decided, we are going south today! 😀 The rough road has changed into a quite nice highway. Unluckily even here we meet many people going the wrong direction, so we have to keep focused. Stupid people, truly!
According to the map, we are on the way to some cool waterfall. It is one of the tourist´s spots, so it is very easy to find. We payed some little fee for the entrance and parking. Walking through some kind of park full of weird statues of people and animals, it seems like they were made by kids (even they were not), they are so ugly and colourful, it just doesn´t go with this jungle. I wouldn´t even take a picture of them, that is how ugly they were. (My camera would die :-D)
We are walking in flip flops on a stone walkway, which is leading us along a totally dry river. After 15 mins of not a single sign of water I start to doubt that we will even see any waterfall. It is dry season after all – what did we expect. I am still having hope, that we will be lucky and there will be some miracle waiting for us.
After another 10 mins we finally arrive to a little tiny lake with a something you could call a waterfall. There is some water going through, but it is definitely not that impressive like the pictures I´ve seen. Ahhh well, what can we do.
There are two groups of people – one is swimming in the lake – talking Czech – oh what a surprise. When they ask me to take their picture, I admit I am Czech too, so we talk for a while. The other group are local men drinking beer and having a fun loud conversation.
While I am trying to take at least a couple pics of waterfall I receive a can of beer (same with Steve), the Vietnamese are quite friendly and they try to talk to us with broken English. There is a moment, when our hearts stop and that is, when one of them, while talking, throws his can into the water under the waterfall – he didn´t even blink, he didn´t even hesitate. And there we saw it – all the other cans they already finished were lying all around. It is so hard to tell them anything, it is their country in the end and we are just visitors. So we just shut up and feel so irritated by what we just witnessed.
The group of locals is saying goodbye a few minutes later, leaving an incredible mess behind. 12 beer cans and even the cardboard is floating in the water all around. Steve is so annoyed that he stands up and pick every each of them and throw them into the rubbish bin, which is like 3 METERS from the waterfall. He is such an amazing person!
When we walk back to the scooter, I am still having this situation in front of my eyes. I just cannot get it!? HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN?!
We take a paper map we got at the hostel and search what else we can do around. “Hey look! That is the most beautiful beach of this island!” I point out a Sao Beach, which is only a few kilometres down the highway. We aren´t truly ready for a beach at all – no swimming gear and we are a bit sun burned from yesterday. But when we are here, we have to get the most from it right?
The turn to the beach is easy to find and it seems a bit more busy than anywhere else. Still we are loosing a proper road so we are jumping on our scooter like on a horse on this dusty dark orange dirt road full of holes. Even the traffic is getting a bit crazy.
Parking our scooter at overcrowded “parking lot” and happily go to explore this wonder. OMG!!! You wouldn´t believe it! Such a paradise! White sand which is crunching under our feet like it is freshly fallen snow. Crystal clear water is rolling in little sparkling waves towards the shore. It isn´t even that busy as I would expect. I think I just fell in love with this place!
We look a bit funny with our long sleeves walking along half naked people. But Steve wants to fly a drone. There are some strict rules about drones in Vietnam, even though no one probably cares. I tried to get the permition, but no one even bothered to get back to me. We don´t want to be annoying other people or get in any kind of troubles, so we didn’t fly once yet. But here it is a good spot.
We are slowly walking on other side of the beach, where are no houses or any tourists to be seen by. We even know, we are far enough from the airport – we truly try our best not to provoke or cause any risk for other people.
We are finding out, that the wonderful clean beaches are just for tourists. As we pass the last building, it is like a different world. So disgusting and full of sh** ehm rubbish of all kinds from plastic bags and bottles, glass, rubber and whatever you can think of. It is even difficult to walk and not to cut our feet on something. How can this happen? Why do they clean only the part for tourists? Damn, this annoys me so much!
Yaaay, Steve is finally able to take baby drone out from the bag – you can see the excitement. I love when he is happy like this, with a childish sparkle in his eyes! We fly quite high, so you cannot even hear it through the waves. Hooray – we got some great videos and photos! That made us both happy!
I am making plans for tomorrow on the way back to the scooter: “WE HAVE TO COME BACK TOMORROW!!! Promise!” I just have to run on this beach in my bikini, even if it is only for a few moments. And I have to swing on those amazing palm tree swings – they look so inviting and gorgeous!
In that moment Steve almost shouts: “Are you fu***ng kidding me?” Before I ask him what is happening, we have a noisy drone of the same kind like ours right above our heads. WTF!!?? We are staring at it with opened mouth and we cannot believe our eyes. Not sure if we wanna laugh or cry. (I believe it is much more close to the anger and tears.) So these people don´t ever care. They don´t give a monkey!!! And there is the reason why all the new rules and laws about drones are coming up. First rule of flying is: “Don´t fly above heads of other people without their permition.” Well, this idiot is not able to follow or even try to follow the simplest rule. We feel that all this is very unfair. Walking quietly back to the parking lot, sweating blood…
Having a cold drink, which disappear in seconds and getting back on our “roaring horse”. We decided to go even further south to explore rest of the island. Scooter gives us an amazing feeling of freedom and it feels like the adventures are hugging is both! Heeeey!!! We are in VIETNAM!!!! Be jealous!!! 😀
Headwind is stroking our faces and dances in our shirts – what an amazing aircon! The air is full of smell of black pepper. There are pepper plantations all around. Must be a season of harvest, because we can see big plastic sheet full of millions of little balls drying in the sun. What a great local attribute – I believe, that everyone who is here on 2 weeks holiday is having at least one package in their suitcase – no doubt!
At one point, the highway vanishes and we are bouncing on a dirt road again – the traffic happen to be horrific! So this is the small town on the bottom of the island. All the children are shouting their “Hello!” from everywhere. They are so enthusiastic and hilarious, while cheerfully waving at us. I feel like a superstar!
There is not much in this town. The most important about this place are the docks, where you can get a boat to take you on one of other smaller island, which are located further south. Unluckily, we cannot do everything everywhere. It is impossible! So there are moments, when we have to make a decision, what we will and what we won´t do – not easy sometimes. But we know there are going to be many islands on our trip, so we leave these alone. At least for this time. Haha maybe when we are an old couple, we can fly here for a couple of weeks, like the other people do… who knows. 😀 Haha I believe, you would like to have our problems, right?
On our way back “home” we enjoy every moment of our ride. We know where we are going, highway is nice and smooth. Enjoying our life! <3
In the evening we take our scooter to the city – hunt for a dinner. I cannot believe, we walked it yesterday – what a crazy idea. 😀 We are walking around hungry, cannot find anything appealing and cheap at the same time.
When we finally decide for a fried rice (we need some change) and sit down at one street kitchen, we are being told, that they run out of the rice. HEY!!! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?! How can anybody in Asia run out of rice?! :-O Unbelievable!
Well we are forced to get back into the searching. When we sit down giving up and wanting fried noodles – they are coming to us with a big sorrow – THEY DON´T HAVE FRIED NOODLES!!! This is a bad joke! We are in hysterics. We are so frustrated we walk into an expensive restaurant, which has a large picture of an amazingly looking burger right in front of the door. We don´t care! WE WANT EXPENSIVE BURGER!
Ordering one beef and one chicken burger and desperately waiting for 40 minutes. This place smells like poo and there are cat sized rats running around. Haha who knows what we are going to have in our burgers?!
When or meal finally arrives, the chicken one is not even a burger but sandwich. (Steve basically never touches an untoasted sandwich – NEVER!) I am completely terrified and offering my burger. But he doesn´t even blink and without a word starts eating his portion. Both meals are very dry with no taste and it is 6x more expensive than we would normally spend.
We finish our meal in a few seconds – hunger is the best cook, right? We pay and leave. We are not allowing our mind to even think about what just happened. It happened, and we cannot change it. We are NOT hungry! Yaaay! I believe, that a few years back, we would be so frustrated, we would probably fight, but not now! We are just doing so well!!! 😀 I am proud of ourselves.
We are ending our day at the rooftop bar again, we are meeting a group of young people with whom we are playing a few games, talk and have quite an entertaining evening. Tonight we are actually happy to lie into our “comfortable beds”.
