I meet up with Katie on the beach where she is sunbathing half nakedly, though with her front down. I’m not sure what the Vietnamese make of topless sunbathing, but she doesn’t try to hide herself when she leans up to talk to me.
A Vietnamese woman of about sixty comes up to me to offer a massage. Katie has already had one, so I take up the offer. Before long, I have two of her colleagues helping her, with doing my back and neck, one doing my legs, and another massaging my arms. I feel pampered, though not as much as I would if they were a few decades younger. Also, I am not keen on the back beating technique they employ.
Later Sam and Caz arrive and we go for another good lunch at the restaurant we ate at yesterday. The people on the UK to Oz trip are generally pleased with the food we have had in Vietnam, especially the seafood.
Afterwards, Sam and Caz rent a moped, with me hitching on the back of Katie’s. We take a ride out of the resort end of town, stopping first at the bay where the fishing boats are anchored. Here there is a fishermen’s hut, by which lay hundreds of drying mats for small fish like anchovies. We chat to a twelve year old girl who speaks very good English and who sells Katie a bracelet. We only know she is twelve because she tells us, but she looks quite a bit younger.
We move out of town looking for some well known sand dunes, but on an empty highway Katie’s moped runs out of petrol. Sam goes to get some on his moped, but it takes a while as there are visible stations nearby. He finds some by asking locals who would have fuel and eventually gets escorted to someone who sells it in jerry cans.
 |
| out of gas |
I haven’t ridden a moped since I was school and went shrieking around out of control ripping up my school’s rugby pitch. However, Katie is driving confidently, speeding along, though my hands are sweating on her shoulders as she alarms me with some crunching gear changes.
Further along the highway, we are waved down by some kids, who offer to escort us to some nearby waterfalls. We take them up on this, and they lead us on a brief walk away from the road over some wetlands, pointing out some local plantlife that reacts to touch by closing inwards.
The waterfalls themselves barely merit the name, although it is pleasant tropical scenery all the same. When we arrive back on the road, we are pleased to see our mopeds are still there. The kids ask us for 50,000 dong from each of us, but we know this would be a fortune to them, and we miserly give them about 35,000 between us. Even so, for here, that is expensive for such a brief experience which is free for anyone to walk to anyway.
We finally arrive at the ‘white’ sand dunes in the late afternoon in time for sunset, having passed the red dunes on the road. The dunes here are not really white, just a paler red than the others. There are basic roadside café restaurants here where we buy some beers, but we decline the offer to rent some mats from local kids to go sand sledding. Looking at the people who are doing it, it looks to be a disappointingly slow experience followed by arduous climbs up the dunes to go again.
We see the sun go down watching a crowd of people line up on the dune to our west to form a human shadow horizon.
Having had a few beers, I am a much happier passenger on the back of Katie’s moped. She drops me at the hotel and says her goodbyes, agreeing to meet up in Saigon as she is going there tomorrow.
In the evening, I join a few others at a restaurant where I have ostrich curry. It’s a fine curry, but the ostrich is overcooked and just like beef.
Afterwards, Brummie Garth, Just John, Stacey (a cheerful and, it has to be said, quite hot young American who joined our group in Nah Trang) and I go along the beach to have some beers at another one of the hotels. It’s surprisingly empty and we relax in the dark on some deck chairs.
On the way back, I start chasing Stacey threatening to throw her into the sea, but she is fit in more ways than one and is much too quick for me drunkenly tripping through the sand in my crocs.
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