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7 July: Lan Co

Today was a beach day and we acted as such, sleeping late and enjoying an omelet and coffee breakfast. (Sometime you just have to have a break from noodle soup or you'll go crazy!! While waiting for our food the father motioned me to the table tennis table for a duel, he won six love. After finding I wasn't a match for him, he handed the bat over to Leanne and we had a social game, hitting the ball from side to side. After breakfast we walked down to the beach for the relaxing day that lay ahead. We found a beach umbrella with two tanning benches and settled down, first warming up while reading, before heading for the water. Lan Co is an amazing beach destination and one we were so glad we hadn't skipped. Not only are tourists non existent, but the water is warm, deep, clear, perfect temperature, with few waves and streams washing you around.

By 15h00 we decided to go to the market, walking along the beach we reached a church where we turned up towards the main street. We walked through the fishing neighborhood, with its tiny houses and locals peering out, watching us attentively and with great interest. Everyone shouting hallo, as this is the only word they know. We found the market a little further down the street, smaller than other, with a low roof or should I say low sails causing you to regularly bend down as you walk between the different stalls. We bought some fruit from the locals but they weren't very concerned at dropping their prices much, but the prices were reasonable enough.

The event of the day : a cat fight erupted between, two women the one a little older than the other, had a few very emotional words (you didn't have to understand the words to know that this was one big emotional fight). This quickly escalated into them throwing each other with water from their plastic basins to even louder words and in the end throwing the basins themselves. We wanted to get a little closer just to see what was happening, but we were motioned by an elderly woman to walk around another way. A few of them were standing around looking while others were just sitting at their stalls as if nothing was happening...

Having bought all the fruit and avo's we wanted, the search for the baquettes began... This was quite a problem, no one understood and no where could we find it, after walking up and down the street looking for 30 minutes we found a place that was willing to sell to us. We bought five, one of which she put some butter on (at all the restaurants you have to pay quite a lot extra for butter, that's if they have it) which we ate along the way, leaving the others for the next day.

Walking back we opted to walk along the lagoon, we found a spot overlooking the shallows with mountains enclosed surrounded with clouds and sat down for a lunch of Ramputans. A distance in front of us a father and son were pushing little boats in and paddling into the lagoon, most probably for a little fishing. Walking back we saw hordes of local women wading around in the shallows, later we found that they look for small shells and crustations which they add to sea food dishes. A kilogram sells for 2 000 VND and on average they collect 50 kg per day.

Back at Chi Na we met up with J & B, watching the sun setting over the lagoon with its pink and orange light slowly disappearing behind the mountains. We bought some beers and joined them on their porch before heading off to dinner, once again enjoying the steamed fish dish. It's not that we're not adventurous but so far we haven't been able to find decent fish, it's usually a small whole fish with not much meat on. These were almost filleted!