Once more unto the beach

The first time I was in Hoi An I spent a day at Cau Dai beach. It's leisurely 20-minute bike ride from the town. The day was windy and overcast and downright chilly when I got on the beach. But the beach itself seemed quite nice. I wondered what it would look like on a clear, sunny day.

Now I know. It wasn't just hot and sunny. It was probably the hottest day I've ever spent on a beach. The sand scalded my feet even through my flip-flops. Even in the shade of a beach umbrella the heat was suffocating.

But the water was refreshingly cool, so I got in every 20 or 30 minutes or so to cool off. In Thailand, by way of comparison, the water is so warm that it doesn't cool you off. It's hard to tell where the air ends and the water begins.

One of the knocks against Vietnam is that, even though it's a beautiful country and easy to get around and the food is delicious and the people are wonderful, the beaches don't compare to Thailand.

I don't get it. I was hugely disappointed by the beaches in Thailand. The ones I visited were narrow, crowded and loud. It's impossible to relax while you're fending off a never-ending stream of beach vendors, 10 or 12 per minute at times.

The beaches in Vietnam are long, wide and relatively undeveloped, although that's changing quickly. Nowhere in Vietnam did I see anything like Hat Chaweng, the biggest beach on Koh Samui in Thailand.



I had plenty of time to check out the Vietnam coastline from the air this past week because I flew four times. Danang-Hanoi, Hanoi-Danang, Danang-Saigon, Saigon-Hanoi. Long story.

There are miles and miles of pristine beach with no commercial development whatsoever. The water isn't as clear as I've seen in other parts of SE Asia but aside from that I like the beaches in Vietnam much, much more than those in Thailand. I don't want to be too hasty in my appraisal, though. I think this warrants further research. I think I should spend a few more weeks beach-hopping before I submit an official opinion.

I've mentioned before how I think it's funny how overweight, pasty-skinned tourists suffer through the scorching mid-day heat in skimpy clothes while the locals do everything they can to avoid the sun. Women here will cover literally every inch of skin during the day: sunhat, mask, scarf, long sleeves, gloves, pants, socks and sandals. The only part they don't cover is their eyes.

The reason, as I understand it, and as with most things I "understand" I'm probably dead wrong, is due to a cultural belief that goes back literally thousands of years. Dark skin is traditionally a sign that the person farms or fishes or toils at some other "common" work in the sun all day. Lighter skin is a sign of wealth or refinement.

When locals go to the beach for fun they go in the morning or the evening, when the sun is low and the air is cooler. This makes a lot of sense, aside from the fact that these are the times when sharks feed.

This is a stretch of beach near my sunbed at mid-day.



This is almost the same shot near sunset, with the beach full of locals.



One way to pass the time is to watch the local fishermen working. These circular boats practically beg to have their photos taken.



Fishermen stand up as they row these with a single long paddle. This is a shot from Cham Island (which I'll cover in a separate post). Try this at home. I dare you. I think I'd be able to stay on a rodeo bull longer than I could stand up in one of these boats.



Later in the day they create just the right amount of shade for a man to play with his granddaughter on the beach.



I met a woman who lives in Saigon but was in Hoi An visiting family. She invited me to dinner at a beach a few miles up the road that I hadn't heard or read about. It was packed with people eating, swimming and relaxing on the beach. I did not see another tourist.

Tourists always pay more. I don't have a problem with that, as long as I don't think I'm getting fleeced. Even at inflated prices I pay much less than I would at home. We ordered two big grilled fish, picked the meat off and rolled it in rice paper with fresh greens. I'm sure there's a name for this but I don't know it. I was too stuffed to ask. We each had a soda. The entire meal cost about twice as much as the coffee I'm drinking as I write this!

A rainy day in Thailand...

... is better than a sunny day at home, I suppose, but it's still a rainy day. After almost two months in Nepal I was looking forward to a few relaxing days in the sun on a beach in Thailand.

I'm still looking forward to it.

I planned my arrival in Thailand after the monsoon season. But the southeastern peninsula has its own, special, late season. It apparently begins the day I arrive.

There are three islands off the southeastern coast that I wanted to check out for different reasons. Ko Samui is the southernmost, the biggest and the most developed. I did get some decent weather there but the place is 'touristy' in the worst sense. For instance, it's possible walk the entire length of the town of Chaweng in a leisurely 30 minutes and yet there were dozens of idle taxi cabs lined up along the sidewalk.

On the good side, I was able to satisfy my Starbucks craving. They had their holiday promotions in gear and were featuring their seasonal drinks. Christmas carols were playing. On November 15. In a country that is 95 percent Buddhist.

But if the tourist nonsense gets to be too much you just escape to the beach, right? Not so fast. It's about as wide as dental floss. This is low tide:



You can see the businesses form a solid wall along the beach. In the foreground is a sign for one of the massage parlors on the beach. The ratio of massage parlors to grains on the sand on the beach is approximately 2:1. At high tide the beach disappears completely and the surf rolls over the steps of the resorts. All the chairs, umbrellas and sandwich boards are pulled off the beach so they don't float away.

I went to the other extreme, a beach called Hat Lamai where -- get this -- there are only three 7-11's, one McDonald's and not one Starbucks! How do people survive there? I only stayed there two nights. I was afraid that without a Frappucino I might resort to cannibalism or find "The Heart of Darkness".

The horror. The horror. Oh, and with an extra shot of espresso and a cranberry scone, please.

I stayed in a cute little bungalow right on the beach with what would have been a stellar view on a sunny day.



I then took the shuttle to Ko Pha Ngan, the island most famous for being the home of the legendary Full Moon Parties. Young folks come from all over the world to dance all night Hat Rin (Sunset Beach) fueled by their substances of choice, all officially illegal but readily available. I made a point to avoid the full moon. I did get the day after the Half Moon Party. You've got to give them credit for milking the moon for all it's worth.

This is the beach after a monster storm and a monster party.



Locals spent the entire day clearing the beach of storm debris and party trash. In the background are bungalows with boulder-front views. The beach was nice, but I had received dozens of recommendations to check the place out and it fell short of the island paradise it had been built up to be.

The weather was terrible but luckily the restaurants all have big screen TVs and show movies. So I watched a bunch of 'Family Guy' episodes and a bootleg of 'Tropic Thunder'.

(Memo to Hollywood:
On behalf of the human race and probably some extraterrestrial intelligences as well, I beg you: Please stop putting Jack Black in movies.
Thank you.
P.S. I am still awaiting responses to my previous correspondences regarding Colin Farrell and Nicolas Cage.)

If you're a 'Friends' fan, go to Ko Pha Ngan. Now. It's all 'Friends', all the time. I stood in the street -- and by that I mean the only street -- and was able to see four different episodes playing simultaneously in four different restaurants. Wacky hijinks ensued in every direction.

Getting around Thailand has been astonishingly easy. I just happened to arrive Bangkok in the middle of a royal funeral. The king's sister died in January but they were kind enough wait until I got here to shut down the city and lay her to rest. That was nice of them.

But even in the midst of the funeral getting to the islands was a breeze. There's a company that arranges door-to-door service. My guest house arranged a taxi to the bus station, a bus to the port, a ferry to Ko Samui and a taxi to my guest house for about $30.

The company has fast catamaran shuttles they use to get people back and forth between the islands. The shuttles each have a snack bar and show movies. Seats are comfortable and the staff is efficient and professional.

All of which counts for doodly-squat in a monsoon. The hour or so it took to get from Ko Pha Ngan to where I am now, the island of Ko Tao, was like something out of a made-for-TV movie.

Fear Ferry!

The staff simply could not hand out barf bags and tissue fast enough. Easily two-thirds of the people on the boat were sick. Women were crying hysterically and men were curled up on the deck in their own vomit.

In retrospect, yours truly should not have had that last bottle of Singha beer at the restaurant the previous night while watching 'Team America: World Police' for the 50th time. I unintentionally ended up re-enacting the scene from the movie where Gary vomits continuously for almost a minute. By the end of the trip I had purged my digestive system so completely -- two bags' worth -- I thought I was going to throw up the soles of my shoes.

It should be noted that we were perfectly safe and dry on a fairly state-of-the-art vessel, but this vessel just happened to be navigating some choppy seas. I think if there had been any danger the crew probably would have paused the movie. Even as I was puking my guts out I found it funny that the retching was so loud it was drowning out the subtler plot points of what seemed to be a straight-to-video teen comedy starring Jack Bauer's daughter from "24".

I arrived on Ko Tao the kind of weather that inspires men to build arks. I had planned on spending the morning wandering around comparing prices on guest houses and scuba shops. Instead I went to the first place I saw.

I took a half-day scuba refresher course to make sure I still remembered how to put on my gear, clear my mask underwater and um, you know, not drown and whatnot, and then went on two fun dives in the afternoon. It was great to be back in the water. There were lively reefs with millions of fish. But it was raining and visibility was poor.

So I'm in Bangkok to make arrangements to move on. I've already done the top three items on my "to do" list for the trip: See Mount Everest, walk on the Great Wall and ride the Trans-Siberian. It's time go to Cambodia and check off number four: Angkor Wat.

The protests here have stranded thousands of travelers but I'll be traveling overland so hopefully I won't be affected.