Today was a less successful beach day. The girls weren't so keen on motorbiking the treacherous roads again so we chose a beach that wouldn't be a rip off in a taxi and called for one. The driver was an arse who stopped off ever 5 minutes to chat to his friends and even popped into a garage to have his power-steering fluid topped up whilst we sat eyeballing the meter.

He eventually dropped us off in a little village that seemed totally random gesturing that he couldn't take the car any further because the bridges would only support the weight of motorbikes.

He seemed confident that it was a short walk straight over the bridge to Bai Cao Cai, and it was marked on the LP's map so we assumed it'd be an obvious spot for visitors. 6 kiloms down the road later we were still nowhere near civilization. A few locals along the way had assuringly prodded us along the road towards Cao Cai, implying with their flailing arms that it was juuuust around the corner. It was getting ridiculous though.

We were in the middle of nowhere and every local who zoomed past on his motorbike would stare confusedly at us (or be honking and dribbling at the girls). After a while we saw a sign to a beach resort and more was lifted as we strode down this path, into even more nowhere. The resort was being built, and had about 20 Vietnamese men just sitting all over it talking loudly. We kept walking for a few hundred metres just to get round the next headland to see if it would provide a view of hope, but it provided a view of sadness.

We went back to the 'resort' and found the guy who spoke the least bad English and asked him to call a cab for us, hoping it would come to where we were. He did call a cab, but said it'd be waiting for us where we were originally dropped off, 5 kiloms back along the road. With no choice and sunburns shoulders, we walked back through to where we began, where a taxi was indeed waiting.

We got a cab back to the beach club hostel, as it was already past midday, and there we sunbathed in the light rain and chatted.

The evening was a short walk down to where the other 3 girls from med school (another Abi, Laura and Natalie) were staying for dinner and Dalat at theirs. We ate at the beach restaurant, thendrank on the beach- the food was lovely, the wine streamed down our necks and it was a lovely evening. The walk back was a bit of a laugh, and we pretty much went straight to bed afterwards.

Bit of a crumby day to start, ended well.