Ordinarily rain on a monday morning would be a bad thing.
On holidays, you can leave what you were going to do until later, and stand out on the balcony taking pictures of reflections of bicycles in the water, and of ladies dropping their school books off the back of the bike. So we had a pretty lazy morning and then left around lunchtime to have a better look around the old town and use up some of the free passes our ticket had bought us. The Mermaid cafe once again proved a good option for lunch, while we went through the brochure and figured out which things we would like to see and how to leave ourselves time to walk back to the hotel, rent bikes, and get on down to the beach.
We hadn’t yet been inside the Japanese Bridge, so that was a must, and there was an old preserved family temple not far away.
The Tran family house was just around the corner, so we started there. The temple is a small part of a house owned by merchants, and it’s at least 150 years old. There are four or four five guides waiting to take you on a short tour, to explain about the traditions of ancestor worship, and reveal some other historical facts. In Sapa they had scrolls representing each ancestor, but here they had a box for each one with the name engraved; there were probably 100 individual boxes. In addition to consulting the ancestors people would also have their own set of Ying-Yang coins; the two silver coins are slightly smaller than a 20c piece, with a square hole in the middle. The Ying coin has two blank sides, and the Yang coin has two sides with writing. You ask whatever question you want answered, throw the coins, and if you get a Ying-Yang that’s good luck. If you get two the same – DO NOT PROCEED! You’re allowed best of three, but if you get Ying-Yang on the second or third throw this means you may have some difficulty with your venture. To throw the coins a fourth time would be unthinkable; it would be like asking nicely for bad luck.
Inside the Japanese Bridge there is an altar, but asides of being amazed at how good the craftsmanship is and how well the bridge has lasted, that’s about all there is to it. The bridge contains a great deal of history, and has been flooded more than a few times since being built. The old town is quite amazing as well; although many of the streetfronts now contain shops and restaurants (and one excellent photo gallery), those mercantile enterprises inhabit very old buildings. So it is a bit touristy but it doesn’t really look it, particularly after the shops start to close down and you are left with stone alleys and locked wooden doors.
At the front of the hotel there is a concrete ‘apron’ that serves as a car, bus, motorbike and bicycle park, and on the footpath next to this apron another friendly lady maintained a stall selling sweets, cigarettes, water, soft drinks and snacks. She greeted us (and everyone) else as we left the hotel and as we came back; it’s good for business, and she soon got to know that all we usually wanted was two 1.5 litre bottles of water, but no cigarettes and no fanta.
This same lady was also in charge of the bicycle rentals, and on the way out earlier in the day we asked about the price, which is 1USD per bike per day. At 5pm, the price can of course be negotiated down to 1USD for two bicycles, for the remainder of the day. The slow and relaxing ride to the beach (about 3km) only strengthened my resolve to do what Douglas MacArthur promised he would do. The locals must have smelled it coming because when we got the beach, unlike yesterday there were about 10 people hanging around, including one lady who promised not to worry and she would watch our bikes if we bought a happy gift from her maybe later?
A large and dramatic cloud bullied across the sky, coming in from over the ocean, almost directly above the inlet between the two points of land curving around from the left and the right. There would be rain. But first there would be idyllic swimming at a deserted beach, in warm calm water. As the sky leaked it’s last light we left the water, and the rain droplets fell, lightly. We towelled dry and rode ourselves back to the hotel, in the faint beginnings of the rain.
We had promised the lady who owned the restaurant next to the hotel that we would come back for dinner the next night, and also we both wanted to try the steamed banana, which was somewhat adequate. And easy to figure out how to make… (no cooking school required).
The rain began to tumble down for a little while after dinner, while we lazed on the balcony and wondered what would happen the next day. Someone had paid the weather gods and paid them handsomely, because there were major floods in Hue just before we landed in Hanoi, minor floods and heavy rain in Hue and Hoi An while we were up in Sapa (where interested readers will recall that we trekked in dry sunny weather), and then while we went to the beach in Hoi An, Hanoi was rapidly becoming the new Atlantis. We heard tales of streets under a metre of water, and far more substantiated stories of the Reunification Express trains not being able to leave Hanoi, and therefore being totally unable to pass through Danang where we were supposing to be getting on the train.
So… plan A was to leave the hotel by minibus at 10am, to get on the train at 11.30am, and arrive in Nha Trang just after 9pm. Plan B was sketchy but involved the trains being late by either a little or a lot, us leaving the hotel at 11am to arrive in Danang at midday, wait around for the train and get to Nha Trang eventually. Plan C… stay here and go back to the beach. Either way around it we would have plenty of time for breakfast, so none of us were really that perturbed; just mystified at how we had managed to slip through the weather net.
Greg
