Stationed in da Nang

Posted by Heidi

We woke up to another hotel breakfast… this one I particularly liked because there was a choice of 4 different cereals, amongst a lot of other probably more tasty and adventurous things which I had no interest in. Then in the morning Ryan and I set off to the Tourist Police office to find out what the hell one does when they’re in a foreign country sans passport. What was intended to be an enquiry may have possibly turned more into making a complaint against the hotel where it was last seen, but what can you do… After some paperwork and minimal help we rang the Australian Embassy who just said it would take 1-2 days to sort out in Bangkok for 4000 of the Baht. (Painfully for Ryan, that is about 160 beers).

So with that disaster averted for the meantime, Ryan and I went bought some hats (Ryan was particularly pleased with his gawdy bright green hibiscus-covered “spot the tourist” bucket hat). Chris and Danae had had jack of long tail boats, so they stayed in town and walked to the next beach and then hired a sea kayak for a while. In between, they sampled the local gourmet delicacies – some pork and pepper chicken burgers from McDonald’s which was guarded by an Asian-looking praying Ronald McDonald.

Meanwhile Ryan and I braved the long tail boats again, and went round to nearby Railay, a stunning couple of beaches surrounded by rock formations, which I fell in love with last time I was here. We lay on the beach for a bit and took some photos. Unfortunately it was overcast so we’ll have to Photoshop in some blue skies into our pics. We fended off the numerous hawkers trying to sell us stuff, especially Na, a lady insisting we both needed foot massages and to take advantage of the “happy hour”, and Ryan negotiated beer prices with a young boy by communicating in the sand. At his own risk Ryan also had a dodgy-looking spring roll from a lady on the beach which not only was yum, it never came back to haunt him. We also stopped for some calamari, and the obligatory Chang for Ryan, and an unbelievably awesome coconut shake in a coconut for me.

We got back into the long tail boat to go back to Ao Nang and putted away, a race against time with the extremely black looking clouds heading towards us. We made it with less than 5 minutes to spare, but unfortunately when I jumped out of the long tail boat I broke one of my thongs, a pair that I’d had since 2001 that have travelled around the world with me. I left that pair of thongs in Ao Nang. They had treated me well, and will be sorely missed.

We met back up with Chris and Danae who came rushing back to the hotel room following the downpour of rain which interrupted them mid-cocktail at the hotel pool bar. Once the rain cleared we went back out, me scuffing around town in a pair of oversized slippers from the hotel, until I bought a pair of replacement thongs – Billabong actually, made in “Australai”. We stopped for some Thai pancakes from a roadside stall, and continued with our routine of evening beers and cocktails, followed by dinner served by a ladyboy. After a pretty quiet night we went back to the hotel for a couple of episodes of Southpark before hitting the hay.