Off East

Our next stop on the Vietnam leg of our tour was a relatively untouristed coastal town called Quy Nhon. To get there we travelled by car with a private driver. This journey was probably the worst of our driver experiences in Vietnam. He played non-stop euro techno hits the whole way, drove too fast and overtook everything he possibly could. There’s so many motorbikes and bicycles on the roads in Vietnam that we constantly thought he’d hit someone or something. He didn’t, luckily.

We booked he driver through one of the many tour agencies you find in every town in Vietnam. The guy in the shop told us that we’d be passing the famous site of the My Lai massacre and that it would be ‘very nice’ (not the way I’d have described it) to go and see it. So we got the driver to stop there en route.

The My Lai massacre is the site of a village where the U.S. Army essentially murdered many innocent civilians and torched their village. A very moving monument and museum are at the spot. Particularly moving are the messages from ex GI’s who weren’t involved in the massacre but have since gone back to visit it to pay their respects to the people affected by the atrocity. A very sad and needless waste of human life!

Quy Nhon is a smallish town situated on a massive bay. Our hotel was right on the beach and was really nice although the person who planned it wasn’t too clever as the swimming pool faced the sea and was in the shade of the building for most of the day…

There’s not a great deal to do in Quy Nhon. We were only there for three nights so took the opportunity to chill out and have a rest. The beach while lovely wasn’t too clean but just down the coast are some amazing small coves with crystal clear water and white sand. We got a taxi to one of these beaches one day to swim and catch some sun and there was only us and a couple of other travellers there.

Every time we visit somewhere new I tend to check online to see what’s been happening there in the local news. I did that for Quy Nhon and read a story about a man being bitten by a shark at the small cove we went to, I didn’t tell Em until after we’d had a swim Anyway, no sharks the day we were there, just lovely weather. It wasn’t until we got to our next stop a few days later that we read in the local news that there’d been a series of shake attacks in Quy Nhon just before we got there. The local government had offered fishermen a reward to catch the shark and one had caught a massive shark, around 5 metres long, just after we’d moved on (here’s the local news story! I’m really glad we hadn’t heard about large sharks off the coast of Vietnam before we got there. Apparently it’s very unusual but they sometimes come into the coast in search of food. Scientists believe that pollution in the sea attracts them, so sadly I think Vietnam may see more sharks given the infrastructure issues they have and that the South China Sea is full of sharks.

The rest of our stay in Quy Nhon was pretty uneventful. We had some great seafood one night and lounged on the beach a lot. One day we were lying on the beach when we suddenly heard a lot of excited screaming and laughing. About 40 children ran down onto the beach and started paddling and generally parking around in front of us. After they got over their initial excitement of the beach and sea they turned their attention to us and all started saying hello. One even took photos (which made Em put something on over her bikini to hide her modesty).

Em went to speak to an adult with the kids who turned out to be their teacher. The children were from a school about an hour inland from Quy Nhon. Most of them hadn’t even seen the sea before (which explains the excitement)! Em’s chat turned into an impromptu English lesson as all the children gathered round. Vietnamese kids are so friendly and can be very, very funny too. Photos were taken and much shouting of “hello goodbye”.

We liked Quy Nhon a lot. The surrounding beaches are amazing, the people are lovely and if they can clean up the main bay it will be an amazing destination. I’d expect it to be firmly on the tourist trail in the next 5 to 10 years!

Here’s a few photo’s of Quy Nhon, we neglected to take many while there…