Let's go to the beach, each…

On Saturday morning we left for the beach a little after 6am. It took about four hours to get to Mui Ne,

a beach town near the city of Phan Thiet. We stopped at some sand dunes where people slide down on plastic - like sledding. There were locals there trying to sell us rides down the dunes - I attracted a huge pack of them at first until I said no and waved my hand enough times that they backed off. While standing on top of a dune taking photos I felt someone touch the top of my head - I turned around and a Vietnamese man was smiling and gesturing that he was shorter than me "yes, I am tall. You are short." Also, please stop touching me grown man!

We spent the afternoon at a beach front restaurant/club - we were the only ones there. There was a woman walking on the beach who was selling seafood - she brought fresh clams and shrimp, just off the boat, and cooked them right in front of us on her portable stove. They were delicious. We went swimming in the South China Sea and I went to get a massage (it was $11.50 for an hour!). We had some Indian food for dinner then stopped at a few of the beachfront clubs. On Sunday we went out to breakfast by the beach (it took about 2 hours! We were the only ones at the restaurant and they had to go to the store a few times to get ingredients), walked around a bit then stopped at Tram's family's house for dinner on the way back to Duc Linh (Tram is one of our Vietnamese teachers). Our trip to Tram's involved a little detour including a local bus ride (the bus crawled with doors wide open picking people up along the road) and peeing in a hole...full cultural immersion! We came up with Vietnamese nicknames on the bus - mine is "om," "skinny." Glad to have seen a new place and glad to be back in class!