A day at the beach

Despite fears of giant reptiles, we stumbled off a terrible night bus ride from Ninh Binh to Hue this morning. It was such a long day yesterday, that I didn't have much humor left in me for what turned out to be a terrible overnight bus ride with an erect seat that didn't recline, a driver with a heavy hand for the horn, and an asian style toilet that you could smell anywhere in the bus.

The day itself proved to be a gritty, fun, and bizarre experience. We hired the guide we met the day before to drive us out to a beach for the day, which he quoted at a reasonable price. It was only on the back of his 'motobai' without any handles and a sore bum only 20 km into the journey that I found out the full length each way was 90 km. To make things more uncomfortable on an already worn through seat cushion, our driver, 'Gung?' had taken a liking to me and used the extensive journey to slowly work his way back, eventually pressing me toward the back end of the bike and eventually him. We played the name game on the way out, pointing out cows and chickens and horses, learning their vietnamese names.

I was already a nervous backseat rider as we swept around huge trucks in the face of oncoming traffic, and Gung's high pitched maniacal laugh from time to time didn't help at all. He seemed even more unstable as, during the middle of our name game, he stopped the bike in the middle of the country and pointed insistantly at a farmer ploughing the field with her cow and young son. I took a distant photo, because that usually seemed to appease him, but he dragged me out toward the field. On the quick jump off his bike I also managed to give myself a second degree burn on his red hot motobai exhaust pipe. Feeling like an idiot with my huge tourist self traipsing through someone's rice paddy and interrupting them in the middle of what looked like hard work, my leg also started throbbing. Gung pointed at the cow and gestured for me to take her plough. Like an idiot, I stood there while he took this fabulous shot...

We finally made it to Sam S'on Beach, started walking and stopped to get a cup of highly sweet coffee. Gung poked his head around the corner and with a sneer, told us that we were paying to much money. He then sat down and broodingly smoked a cigarette without speaking to us for the rest of our coffee. The rest of the day included him - no opportunity for lounging around on the beach, Gung had some plans for us. We went up to an unexciting rock formation and he took a picture of us. A peasant woman led her small pony up to us she had painted to look like a zebra and harassed us to take a photo with it. We left to go back to the beach and Gung waited to see what we were going to do. We started playing frisbee and he began in with us, shrieking and falling in the sand after tosses. It was kind of fun because it was obvious he had never played with a frisbee before. He oddly disappeared and Ryan and I took the opportunity for some beer and gin rummy. He showed up after half the restaurant had gathered around to watch our card 'skills' and was in a terrible mood, saying, 'we go... now!'

Suffice to say the way back was even less comfortable and even more stomach clenching. It just isn't right for a whole country to disobey traffic laws, AND to have enormous dump trucks swerving with the best of the motorcycle drivers. As if to drive our potential fate home, we witnessed an enormous blood spot in front of a semi on the peaceful country road from the beach to the next town, with the requisite crowd of people. I guess people are morbid the world over.