Oct 23rd – Nov 12th, 2019

Bai Xep

In our search for the perfect place to relax, Heidi and I both shared a similar vision that it be like Rincon de Guayabitos, Mexico. We have so many fond memories of the place from year after year returning with our kids for our mid-winter escape to the sun. What we loved was that it was a fishing village that doubled as a resort town, authentic Mexico. We found “Guayabitos” in Vietnam at a little place called Bai Xep.

This town is small in every respect, there couldn’t be more than a few hundred locals, the streets are too narrow for cars, (but not motorbikes, which zip up and down the alley wide streets with abandon), and the accommodations are rustic. We stayed in a beachfront bungalow at a small hotel/hostel called Life’s a Beach. The proprietor Steve is a Brit who started his business in 2015 and never looked back. With his partner Gavin they now have an apartment rental, beachfront hotel hostel and the party hostel 7 kms down the coast called “Life’s a beach Backpackers.” 

Our accommodations were just perfect, a bamboo bungalow on the top floor with a perfect view of the beach and a super comfy bed to boot. We originally booked for three nights to be sure we had found the right place, but the day we checked in we extended for another four days and extended again for four more once we officially “fell in love” with the place. We ate fresh fruit for breakfast and Vietnamese coffee with sweetened condensed milk, (cà phê sữa nóng). We walked the little beach (less than 1 km long) daily and played in the waves and read our books. We had finally found the rest spot we came to SE Asia for.

Steve and the staff made our life so easy, they even served family dinner every 2-3 night. At family dinner everyone who stays is invited to join some of the staff for either a traditional Vietnamese dinners, (5-6 plates of local fare, usually with fresh fish multiple dishes with fresh local vegetables matched with chicken, beef or pork and spring rolls) or a British Sunday dinner, (Roast Lamb, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes Yorkshire pudding and enough gravy to float a boat). There was always more food than we could finish and afterward they hosted a trivia night pitting guest groups against each other in pursuit of the prizes: shooters for the category winners and the coveted grand prize, the Life’s a Beach hat. Some nights evolved into guests and staff grabbing a ukulele and regaling us with their singing prowess!

One day we rented a scooter and went off to explore the region including a visit to the party hostel that was part of the Life’s a Beach family. After the visit we were truly glad we chose NOT to stay here, everyone looked like they had been through the ringer last night and by mid-day were looking for a hair of the dog. We also headed north to a small town we really enjoyed and where we met some of the friendliest people on our trip. The town grew up around a leper hospital as families moved into the area to be closed to loved ones in hospital. The beach behind the hospital was gorgeous and the hospital was ringed with wide boulevards and parks. There are still a few lepers here, but the hospital has evolved to be a dermatological center due to the sever drop in cases of leprosy. At the far end of the beach is a park full of busts commemorating doctors who in some way contributed to the battle against leprosy. The best part of our visit were the people. We stopped for lunch at the spot where they hold their market and every single person, we encountered either spoke to us, waved or smiled as we made our way around their little town center. The children especially made a point of talking to us in English as they are all studying it in school and enjoy the opportunity to show off their newfound knowledge.

Steve warned us about a week into our stay that a storm was heading for Hoi An about an hour drive north of where we were.  Though he was more worried about the backpackers’ hostel down the road, which was more exposed than our hotel, he and the staff were taking the typical precautions, strapping down the palm-thatch roofs, harvesting the coconuts so as not to brain anybody when they fell, and putting sandbags around the restaurant/bar.  But still, the storm was not really expected to be worse than the 2017 storm that Steve and co. had weathered (with not much damage) and Vi, one of the employees, told Heidi that she wasn’t worried. So we decided to stay put. Ha!

By noon we noticed a big difference in the waves as the storm approached.  Initially it seemed like finally the strongest swimmers/surfers were getting the waves they wanted but once the rip tide began pushing down the beach toward the exposed volcanic rock, everybody was out of the water! By around 3:00 pm the storm was upgraded to typhoon status, Matmo (and when they name them doesn’t that mean they are serious?!) came aground it had shifted and came right over top of our resort.  It was originally estimated to have winds of 75 kms per hour but by the time it landed it was packing 125 kms per hour winds and dropped 400 mms (16 inches) of rain in four hours.  We were all pretty freaked out from 7:00 pm to 11:00 as we watched the beach disappearing in front of our eyes and the waves cresting over a 15-meter-high rock outcropping at the north end of the beach nearest our resort.

At about 11:00 pm we all took a collective breath as the winds died down and the rain abated and everyone thought the worst had past, so Heidi and I went to our room. How wrong we were: the temporary lull turned out to be just that. We were directly in the eye of the storm and the next phase was much worse with winds so strong and rain so bad it was driving straight through the bamboo walls and swaying our building so much Heidi and I thought it might tip over! We decided to take shelter in the shared concrete bathroom/shower room downstairs figuring it would act much like a bunker. 

As we were bringing in chairs and pillows, our wet and scared downstairs neighbor, Vi (!), came out of her room.  Her own bamboo hut had very early on become uninhabitable so she had come into the unit below us to sleep.  As she came out shaking, Heidi gave her a big hug and rubbed her back and tried to sooth her.  Heidi said “but Vi, you said you weren’t worried!” She replied “oh no, I scared then!  I even more scared now!” We invited her to join us, which she gladly did! We huddled into chairs with blankets and pillows but none of us really slept.  At about 3:00 am when it sounded as if the storm had passed, we all went upstairs to our bed (3 of us in a king-sized bed) for a few hours’ sleep.  And we could all look each other in the eye in the morning!

When we arose in the morning, we found out that the roofs on 2 of the buildings had been partially ripped off, power was out, other misc. damage, but thank god, nobody had been hurt.  Actually one of those damaged roofs was on the dorm building, housing some of the younger (and drunker) guests, who awoke in the morning without any knowledge of the severity of the storm (or the water pouring down into the room!). The staff was mopping up and beginning repairs on the place and Steve was recommending everyone look for other accommodations until the power could be restored.

Heidi and I went next door to the fancy resort and found out they had generator power and Wi-Fi so business there was as usual. We briefly contemplated moving, but we so loved our room at Life’s a Beach, the location and more so the staff, that we asked Steve if we could stay, provided we kept out of the way, and he agreed.  We finished our stay “glamping” without power or Wi-Fi, (only a little cellular just to check the Canuck scores), candlelight dinners cooked by the amazing staff exclusively with gas, and a feeling of comradery having lived through this event together!

Mekong Delta

We had heard from many people in Vietnam that the Mekong Delta was a must-see destination due to its unique geography and the importance of the agricultural and fisheries produced in this area. The Mekong is referred to as the nine dragons by native Vietnamese as there are nine separate tributaries that make up the Mekong River. We did much research into what to do in the area and due to lack of Wi-Fi connectivity due to the storm or just flat out laziness we decided to book a tour of the area, this we came to regret.

Let me preface this by saying we are a bit hypocritical as after six months we have started to complain about “touristy” areas. We have even discovered a new word being used here in SE Asia to describe these areas, “touristic”. The tour we booked began in Ho Chi Min City and we had overnight in town due to flight complications, so we offer no comment or opinion on this city. We were picked up by our guide and driver and whisked away through rush hour traffic for our 6 hour drive to Can Tho, the center of the Mekong Delta. This was our first regret, driving that long the tour operators need to create stops to break up the trip, we called them filler as the stops were not very interesting nor very authentic. An example was we stopped to see the various ways the people harvest and sell coconuts in all the various ways, candy, oils, and shells for burning with the ash being used to make carbon batteries. Although somewhat educational, it was primarily a tourist trap with everything for sale to a captive audience based on the fact we arrived by boat so had no way to say no and walk away.

Over the next few days we were subjected to similar “staged” experiences, floating down manmade canals in a eucalyptus forest, visiting an abandoned and broken down brick factory and a visit to a Cocoa farm, (we were late and the lady refused to give us the tour). It sounds horrible, but in between we did get to experience Can Tho’s famous floating market, which was amazing to see but sadly is beginning to fade in its importance to the locals as markets on land seemed busier than on water.

We stayed in beautiful bungalows and ate wonderful food but we wouldn’t recommend this tour to others. We instead would recommend flying directly to Can Tho and staying at one of the many guesthouses or bungalows on stilts in the area. Tour the interesting old town in Can Tho, take a tour of the floating market and look at the local tour guides for other trips of interest.

Phu Quoc

Given the wonderful beach experience we had in Bai Xep, (less the typhoon) we couldn’t wait to get back to the beach in Phu Quoc, a small island off the southwest coast of Vietnam. As we flew in we couldn’t help but notice the many cranes up and down the coast, this place had been discovered quite obviously. Our guesthouse arranged to pick us up at the airport for the 30 minute drive to their location in the Ong Long beach area. From beginning to end our experience with our hotel was first rate, our room was amazing, the gardens were stunning and the pools awesome. We were not beachfront as the cost was way beyond what my Scottish blood could bear, but the 500-meter walk to the beach was not onerous. We split our time between the beach and the pool and really enjoyed just relaxing, reading and experiencing the local food on the island. This area was particularly popular with Russian tourists with much of the signage being in Vietnamese and Russian. No Putin sightings but we will keep you posted if we see him.

We had read much about this being an Island paradise with the most beautiful beaches and clear water. Perhaps this was true or maybe still is at certain times of the year but we had an employee at a high end resort explain the high and low seasons on the island to us: the high season on each side of the island corresponds with the direction that the wind blows at that time of the year. For instance when the winds blow from west to east all of the garbage from Thailand and Cambodia ends up on the western beaches and therefore that is the low season on that side while the high season would be on the east side of the island that isn’t getting the garbage from Vietnam at that time! Amazing, but in a bad way. And yes there was a lot of garbage. Not really on our beach, Ong Long, in the North but we heard and read from others that the south beaches are truly disgusting. We also experienced, while exploring on a scooter, pile after pile of garbage dumped along the sides of roads in the forest. There seems to be no real infrastructure for keeping up with the present trash problem and this, compounded with massive expansion and construction, will surely result in a truly unimaginable situation soon. This problem is not unique to this area, when in Bai Xep we would collect daily 1-2 kilos of plastic waste off our beach, after the storm we collected nearly 15 kilos. Plastic is truly the scourge of our generation and the developing countries struggle the worst due to the lack of financial resources, infrastructure and educating the locals on the long-term impact of trash.