It’s the beach, Jim, but not as we know it…
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009Vung Tau, Vietnam
Black flags on long poles flapping in the water indicate the beach is dangerous. Signs telling you “what to do if you hear the tsunami siren” leave a sense of dark foreboding! Oil globs washed up on the shore, rats scurrying amongst the rubbish piles, it’s just not the beach as we know it.
At least today was clearer. It was still not the bright blue sky we associate with summer days at the beach (and I guess, to be fair, it *is* winter!), but the horizon haze gave way to something approximating not-grey. It was clear enough to see a flotilla of fishing boats smoke their way towards shore and to see half a dozen more oil tankers out at sea. The headland looked more like a silhouette than a mere watermark as it had the other days.
We are accustomed to the beach being not only under a clear blue sky, but also to include a huge expanse of usually sparsely populated sand. Not here! The thin strip of sand is totally covered with row upon row upon row of deckchairs sheltering under umbrellas. As far as the eye can see are umbrellas, and all around are people. There are no cricket matches or volleyball games – there is barely space between the umbrellas to build a sandcastle!
As the incoming tide gets higher and higher, the seating arrangements are crammed closer and closer on the remaining sand sliver. And there’s something else, quite unfamiliar to us – we are used to the beach being “free fun”, but here you pay for the equipment. A dollar for an umbrella, another for a chair, the table came free.
Not sure how much to hire a ring, but we got to use one. Someone who decided to go home thought Tgirl4 was cute and gave us hers for the rest of the day. Yay for those dangerous waves!
In between the brollies, sellers wander with sunhats and fruit and sunhats and eggs and sunglasses and electronic games and sunhats and cotton buds (no, really!) and sunhats and all manner of seafood – they carry their little fire with them and will cook whatever you fancy on the spot; sotong, crab, cockles, prawns, fishballs. If none of that whets your appetite, there’s sweetcorn in chilli or yoghurt scooped from a big chilli-bin or pork chop on rice or icecream or something white and beancurdish-looking – we’re not sure what it was, but ER was given a slab and declared it to be too good to save for the swimmers. (She was also given prawns and BBQed meatballs and fishballs – half a dozen of them! – and new year peanut candy and a container of chewy dried squid to share with everyone and boiled sweets – oh to be cute).
The crabs are not just for eating. The first day we were at the beach, one of the almost totally deserted days, there were more crabs than people. The sand was literally crawling with them. It was fun to walk along and watch them burrow under the sand at your giant footstep approach. And not only were there A LOT of crabs. This pretty sizeable number skuttled around today (boy oh boy can they move!), scaring away the people in front of us, meaning we could get a picture of the sandcastle! Guess what tools we used to make this Egyptian-inspired structure (which two kids soon after stomped to pieces)…..no buckets or spades, Jim. Just a peanut butter jar!
While Mama looked on from her chair in the shade with her favourite toys tools.
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It’s a bike, Jim, but not as we know it…..
The kids have been missing their bikes a bit and so we thought they’d enjoy taking a ride. Off we wobbled down the main road on tandems with an extra seat on the back.
Possibly not the quietest place to learn to handle a bike with two (or in Rob’s case, three) passengers, especially around the massive roundabout with bikes and cars going every which way including the wrong way…..and for Lboy8, who was doomed to sit on the back seat, it was not the experience he was yearning for. However, it made for a faster-than-walking trip to the bus station to purchase tickets to Saigon, and everyone apart from Rob had a thoroughly enjoyable time (don’t be too hard on him – his adjective of choice was “excrutiating” – he was carrying ER2 on his back and riding a far-too-small bike – you shoulda seen his grasshopper legs!)
Come to think of it, you can…..
And look at the sunset Jim, up the hill where a Rio-ish Jesus (not that we’ve been there to compare, but we’re told he’s pretty similar) beams out over the South China Sea. This is life.
rayres