Saturday
A deliberately leisurely get up again this morning, smothered in some cream, made up our lunch bag and out for breakfast at about 10am. After stopping off for croissants and fruit smoothies (which by the way are pure fruit and delicious!) we headed down to the beach to begin our much awaited day of sunbathing. The beach here is absolutely gorgeous, and it's not very crowded at all. Or at least the stretch is long enough for all the people to have a good amount of personal space to themselves. It was a postcard picture, the palm trees all along the side, the blue sky, white sand and deep blue sea. The only complaint we have is you can't go 15 minutes without somebody coming up to you and trying to sell you something. Even when you're lying there eyes closed clearly very relaxed or possibly even asleep they come right up to you and shout 'buy something?!' 'No Thankyou'. ' very good price!" " no Thankyou'. " very pretty bracelet" "No" .......repeated again 15 minutes later but maybe next time for food, or cigarettes, or water. By about the 10th one all manners are gone and a simple " no" then ignore is the standard behaviour from most people. Or just a death stare and no reply, or a complete ignore if its liam! Its the same on a lot of tourist beaches but it doesn't make it any less annoying when you're trying to relax!
We lay and relaxed as much as we could in the 15 minute intervals we had for a little while before I decided to go into the sea to cool off. The water is a lovely temperature, just cool enough to cool you off but not cold. The waves were massive as well, at first I was content just to sit at the edge but got braver after about 15 minutes and started riding the waves. It was so much fun! Must have been in the sea for about 45 minutes. We lay in in the sun for a bit and when it came time for a drink and food we went int he shade for a shoe before heading back for more. Liam also had a play in the sea and loved it! Despite topping up our factor 30 three or four times over the 4 hours we were on the beach the strength of the rays proved too much and by about 2.30 we had had enough and so had our skin. We had a walk up the beach, enjoying the views and people watching. Spot the lobster tourist, spot the tourist with least clothes on, dodge the beach stalkers, pity the poor souls who made the mistake of engaging in conversation or looking at the produce for too long and now have a horde surrounding them. We walked for about half an hour then went into a food court on the 5th floor of the shoppingcomplex overlooking the sea. We stopped off for a smoothie and mine had REAL stawberries which was exciting because ive not seen any fresh since leaving england. Liam's had squirty cream and a cherry on top as well. On the way back we tried to keep to the shadows wherever possible!
After showering we headed back out for food, and ended up settling in the 'why not' bar as it seemed the cheapest. We each had burgers and fries and are proud of it! Washed down with wine and beer. It was a very nice day despite not getting up to much and we're looking forward to tomorrow.
Sunday
We decided to hire bicycles out today, we were originally going to take a moped but we would have spent more to fill it with gas and the distances we planned on travelling wernt really that far. After grabbing a croissant and vietnamese coffee in a cafe we went for another smoothie which we took to the beach. We sat for a while drinking before being approached by a Vietnamese man perhaps in his 60s who was speaking to us in French. When he discovered we were English he began speaking in English as well, very fluent in each. He was a very odd man, just in swimming trunks and, as Liam pointed out as soon as he had gone, some lovely little dried bogies in both nostrils! He was very philosophical, and mostly spoke about very odd things like hooliganism, the difference between English and French, sigmoid Freud, and how the sculpture in the gardens behind us looked like a penis (which was odd because the government try to keep sexuality down to a minimum so why would they fund a phalic sculpture considering they are all communist and have no sense of humour??) After about 10 minutes of this very odd conversation with this very odd yet intelligent and quite nice gentleman he left us in peace ( but not before mentioning how much he liked Americans for their smiles and politeness but disappointed they were mostly fat, "but then again, I can't talk because look at me I look 3 months pregnant *booming laugh*".
We set off on the bikes, taking our lives into our own hands with the traffic. You just have to go for it here and hope for the best, everybody just drives around everybody. After 5 minutes or so we heard somebody shouting, turned around and there was our Vietnamese man on the back of a scooter shouting and waving at us. He slowed right down to go our speed, all the traffic going around him just to tell us something about the sun rise! As they were pulling away Liam shouted ' don't be a hooligan" which was met with lots of laughter and him repeating it as they sped off.
We rode for about half an hour, the roads are pretty big and it's more or less just one long stretch of road by the side of the beach the whole way. We arrived at chong rock, reapplied sun cream and went to explore. The sun was blazing but the breeze made the temperature really nice and we were both covered up fully to give our skin a break. There are lots of big rocks and you can see for a long way out when standing on them. We sat and watched all the fishermen at the sides for quite a long time. They were all getting very wet and in the 45 minutes or so we were watching they probably caught 3 or 4 fish. Although it was essentially just a bunch of rocks by the water, we enjoyed it and were there a long time. It was mainly just us two safe the fishermen and a couple of other people passing over every now and again. There are a few myths to go along with the rocks involving fairies and giants, with various rock formations supposed to be in certain shapes including a dolphin, a hand print and an arm.
The next stretch of the journey took about 15 minutes through slightly smaller and more congested roads but it was ok. We went to the po nagar Cham towers which was founded in 700 and something. It was built in dedication to the goddess of Vietnam which is again closely linked with a Hindu goddess. You can tell its an old structure but the architecture is wonderful. There are a few towers with shrines inside that are lovely to look at at the grounds are beautiful with all the trees, flowers, fountains and old Cham sculptures. We were there at the time of a traditional cham dance performance, with me playing the drums and an odd instrument sort of like a flute I guess but we don't know what it was. The music had an Indian sound to it. The girls who were dancing were good, they did dances with clay pots, fans and coconut shells all in formation and in the pretty traditional dresses. After spending about an hour there we cycled to the long son pagoda.
It took us about 20 minutes or so and the roads were a lot busier on the way to that one so we had to be careful. It was still really fun and I'm glad we cycled, the weather was lovely for it too. We both really liked long son, there was a school inside with lots of different age groups all in their little uniforms. We sat and watched a class of kids maybe about 7 years old singing songs boys against girls, the teachers looked like scout leaders. We walked a bit further up to the temple where there were loads of students sat inside with a Buddhist monk teaching them. We watched for a short while, it was really peaceful with lots of affirmations written on plaques on the walls. Further up the steps we came across a little old lady in front of a massive bell. She beckoned for us to come over and got Liam to go under and sit inside the bell. She then rang the bell 3 times, each time waiting for the ringing to stop before chiming it again. Afterwards she did a short prayer and let him out, then the same with me. It was actually really nice in the bell, you sit on a small bench and there's lots of little letters stuck on the inside in Vietnamese. I expected the sound to be a lot louder but its actually quite relaxing in there. We went up even more steps and got to the big white Buddha. Im not sure how high it is but it's big and it looks lovely. The white of the marble against the blue of the sky was beautiful. We walked up the steps towards it and around the back tucked away are hundreds of memorials that looked like they contained ashes from cremations. There were rows and rows, all with little insence sticks burning and the names, places of birth, pictures and dates of births and deaths. It was placed in a nice spot because wherever you were if you looked up you could see the top of the Buddha. We walked down a different way and saw some local people, some children playing and women sitting talking. We came across a nice little area with a mini reclining Buddha made from white marble.
After all of that we decided to head back to the hotel. We ended up going into a shopping complex on the way home though to find me some sunglasses as my other ones broke. We then bought more stuff for lunch tomorrow and went up to see what the cinema was like. We ended up buying 2 tickets to see paranormal activity 4 in the evening. We got back to the hotel alive despite rush hour and several roundabouts and after showering from the long day we went out for a quick bite to eat before cycling back up to the cinema which is about 15 minutes away. The film was a bit weird, I think they're running out of story line considering its number 4. We both still crapped our pants though despite most of the movie theatre being full of Vietnamese people having full on conversations. There was one particularly randy couple on the row opposite us who just talked the for the whole film, giggled, tickled each other, canoodled and god knows what else and I was ready to smack them in the face by the end. We were debating whether to go to one of the bars to watch the football but we ended no just heading back to the hotel and finding a live stream in the end due to having a fairly busy day. Another beach day tomorrow, it feels like we're on holiday at the moment not travelling ( although I'm sure a big percentage of you reading this believe the whole thing to be a holiday!) .
