Morning Downpour
We were in no rush to leave our homestay today as it was checkout day. We stayed until 12 o'clock just to make sure the rain had stopped before walking 5 minutes to 'the family restaurant'. Here we were going to eat our last Cau Lao before leaving for Da Nang.
We had arranged for the owner's son to take us. He is a driver for a fancy hotel. We said goodbye to the friendly restaurant owners before loading our bags into a rather fancy car. The journey went smoothly and the roads seemed really quiet. Maybe everyone is at the beach!
We checked in to a rather fancy hotel (winter rates) and made our way to our room. The room was great but opposite was the lift so we asked if we could swap just in case the lift was noisy and kept waking us in the night. It is pretty quiet here so there is probably no other people in the hotel to use the lift! The receptionist came with us to our new room on the 4th floor. We arrived on the 4th floor and waited for the doors to open. They didn't. We tried a few buttons and the lift jumped but the doors didn't open. The receptionist was starting to look a little nervous ...
We waited in the lift wondering how quickly a lift engineer in Vietnam takes to arrive if we pressed the alarm button. However there was a tiny gap between the doors just about a finger width. After a few trys shoving a finger in the gap, we managed to free the doors! Relief all round as we nervously hurried out.
In our room we dropped our bags, jumped on the bed and searched the cable TV for English channels. And yes, we were in luck! We haven't seen any English language on TV for a while so it was quite exciting.
The novelty soon wore off and we headed to the beach. It was cloudy but the beach was a hive of activity. Football matches, team building and swimming. We walked for a while before finding a resort that appeared to have a special event in the evening.
At about 7pm we headed back to the resort. We could hear a piano playing and someone singing but there was no one there. We spotted one couple eating dinner so we hesitated at the gates wondering where everyone was.
A lady approached us and invited us in to watch the free Vietnamese culture show. We were apprehensive but followed her in and took seats next to the infinity pool. A few minutes later the pianist disappeared and the dancers arrived. What followed was a stunning dance show and we were pretty much the only people there.
After the show had finished we were invited to have our photo taken with the dancers, so we did!
Next stop was the Dragon bridge that breathes fire every weekend at 9pm. We didn't think we would make it to the bridge in time. We were right. Instead we took photos of the bridge lit up in different colours before eating at the night market right opposite. We chose 2 dishes we had not eaten before. One was noodles with peanuts and pork and the other a crab based noodle soup with pineapple. Both delicious! The night market had some pretty impressive lobsters and sea food platters but they were a little steep for our backpacker budget.
On our walk home we found something else to try ... mung bean juice. Also really good.
The route home weaved between the houses. We met a rather large dog who wasn't too pleased to see us. Christine showed her teeth and he soon backed off !
