Quy Nhon hadn’t really been on our radar at all (and it has
a very brief couple of pages in the guidebook) but we decided we wanted to go
to a beach that was relatively untouristed as well as visit Nha Trang and Mui
Ne. Quy Nhon does look like a beach resort, but it was very quiet, and it may
be more of a local tourist spot than one that sees many international visitors,
as we were much more of a minority here.
Our hotel was brilliant and may well
be the best hotel of the trip – from the outside it looks like it belongs in a
Tim Burton fairy tale! From the inside… we had a huge balcony looking out over
the sea, two double beds, a table and chairs, plus a TV that at one point
offered the best TV we’ve seen since getting here (they were showing Hanna). We
were just here to relax for a day or two, and it looked like we had got very
lucky indeed.
Once we’d settled into the room, we headed out for lunch at
Barbara’s Kiwi Café (we assumed there was some NZ reference here, though if
there was it wasn’t obvious!). The whole area was very quiet – perhaps we were
arriving out of season, or it was a quiet day…
We took a stroll around the beachfront parks, seeing the
most enormous rat being chased by a feisty dog that both promptly ran right under
the bench we were sitting on and through the hedge behind us (another Alice in
Wonderland seeming moment…)! This prompted us to move along, so we popped to
the shop to pick up some dinner we could enjoy on the balcony that evening and
headed back to the hotel.
Before dinner though, we went over to the beach to
chill out for an hour, and maybe have a quick swim. We didn’t have much time to
get comfortable before we were accosted by a strange young Vietnamese man named
Tom, who quizzed us on everything to do with the UK and told us all about his
fiancé and their plans to move to London - it was very sweet but we couldn’t
quite figure out what he was up to, as he did try half-heartedly along the way
to invite us to stay at his hotel (but we already had one) and then to get us
to change to his hotel (but no, because ours looks like it belongs in a Tim
Burton film and we love it!) and then he tried to get all this personal
information out of us so we made our excuses and escaped his clutches! That
lost us our swim time before sunset on the balcony, so we detoured back to the
hotel pondering what he might have been up to, if anything! There are some very
friendly people here, but they usually aren’t seeking to draw so much personal
information out of you.
That evening we simply enjoyed the benefits of having a
balcony… and as we sat there, listening to music quietly while watching the
waves lap against the shore, we saw all the people who’d been mysteriously
missing all day. The whole beach comes alive late afternoon and throughout the
evening, lots of people going swimming, playing football on the beach, and
hanging out with their friends – it was like an episode of Home and Away, but
in the dark! We enjoyed watching this exploding scene before watching Hanna and
drifting to sleep.
We only had one more day here so we took a long beach walk,
heading past some really cute birds that scurried, rather than flew, out of the
path of each wave (it was like they were playing chicken with the waves, but I
think they were scouting for elusive worms). We also saw some comical crabs
scurrying twice as fast as the birds, and several circular fishing boats lining
the beach, resting upside down with oars ready and waiting – it was almost
tempting to give it a go ourselves!
We really wanted to make the most of our last night, so we
stocked up on the best takeaway dinner we could find and retired to the balcony
again. It was a perfect evening set off by an enormous storm which we could
enjoy from our birds-eye sanctuary, with a cold beer for company. The rain
scattered the night-time revellers, but they soon returned when the rain eased
off.
The next day was another early bus, with another beach as a
reward - this time to Nha Trang.
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