What we did today

We did it! Today we think we sucessfully found the only mean people in Vietnam. We got some bikes from the hotel (back on two wheels, yay) and rode about 4km out to the Hoi An beach. Michelle had read in the guidebook that it was OK to park your bike on the beach, but that some people had set up little operations to try and charge you to park in certain areas. Well as we rode up we were yelled at and flagged down and told to park our bikes in a certain area because they were not allowed on the beach. After we did, the guy tried to charge us 20 times the already illigitmate amount the guidebook had stated. We said nevermind, we'd park somewhere else, and asked if there were any free areas around. The guy just told us to get our bikes out of there, and was of absolutly no help. So on the way out we passed the guy who had initially flagged us down. Hoping he would be more helpful, I asked him if he knew of any other place we could go that was free. He just kept yelling 'No!' and motioning for us to pay or leave, then he got out a big stick and kept hitting a sign that said how much it cost and smacking our bikes trying to get us out. I got out the guidebook and pointed to it saying I knew it was free somewhere... but the guy just kept yelling and getting more aggressive. Quite frankly, they were both totally full of crap... I couldn't even get either of them to look me in the eye when we talked. I tried, they just turned away when I looked at them and told us to 'go home'. pff.

Anyway, working off the assumption that the beach was probably bigger than just that little area, we rode back a short ways and then headed north (parallel to the beach) to see if there was some other way to get there. There was, and after only 1/4 mile of riding we were rewarded with free parking for our bikes, cheap beer, comfy chairs right on the water, and beaches as far as we could see in either direction - with no people. In fact, it was by far the nicest beach we've seen thus far. Since the road we took actually connected to the beach we had originaly tried to go down (behind the 'security guard') we rode up from behind the guard on the way back just to waive and smile, but he was gone. Dang.

Off to Hue tomorrow.