Viet Nam the fourth: Day 5 Quy Nhon

Happy New Calendar Year. It’s a good thing that the Vietnamese seem to be happy celebrating every new year, be it calendar, Chinese lunar, or their own lunar (which may or may not coincide with Chinese lunar) as around 1140pm on New Year’s Eve the heavens opened up and it rained a bit for at least the next hour. Fortunately we were safely tucked up in bed, but I wonder how the outdoor concert fared. We did see some of the fireworks from out window.

It’s now 2024, crazy. The only resolutions you’ll see here are to travel more, eat more, walk more, and try to judge the world less through a western lens.

Our last day in Quy Nhon, and it was solidly quiet. Tried the hotel breakfast, it wasn’t fabulous but most aren’t. We then took a stroll along the beach, and that was pretty quiet too, maybe everyone was sleeping in, as apparently it’s a public holiday today. Certainly a lot of shops were open, so we’re not sure where everyone went who did have the day off. The beach is fairly clean, and has constant small rolling waves, and the sand is quite compacted along the water’s edge making a firm base. Along the beach sat unused soccer goals and volleyball nets, though we’ve seen them in use on other days. Many public spaces in VN also have exercise equipment, so I had a go on the seat with overhead bars that when you pull down it lifts the seat, and another standing rocker that lets you swing from side to side. There’s my 2024 workout done.

Then it was massage time, and the place around the corner from the hotel was open (it’s looked shut some of the times we’ve walked past, possibly as its frontage also doubles as scooter parking. So we had an hour of being poked, prodded, stretched, and pummelled, and my calves certainly needed it. As I age, I get occasional knee pain as my calves are doing too much and my upper legs aren’t doing enough, so anything to relax my calves is good. I probably also should get my lower back pummelled at some point as that’s also feeling a little unloved.

Lunch was a delightful medley of meat, fried tofu, greens and rice vermicelli, served with rice paper for rolling and a wonderful salty dipping sauce. The sauce was purple, with hints of fish sauce, garlic, and other flavours and the whole assortment was wonderful. I really need to spend a moment in these places to take a picture of what I’m ordering, but instead it’s a case of waving my phone over the menu until google translate finds something good, and then ordering that.

I popped into the local barber shop or cat toc for a shave, there’s just something that appeals to me about getting a barbershop shave, especially when it costs 20k VND, or a little over a dollar. The shop was fairly busy, as they seemed to offer a number of services including ear cleaning. One of the barbers had a handful of different tools on long sticks, and seemed to have a purpose for each. I wasn’t curious enough to give it a go, I’ll stick to them waving sharp blades across my throat.

Dinner was similar to last night, first stop was at the banh xeo place, where again they were delightful and crunchy and went wonderfully with a mango and avocado smoothie. a couple of the ladies recognised us and were happy to see us return. I’ve probably mentioned a few times (or more than a few times) how wonderfully friendly the Vietnamese generally are. As Quy Nhon seems to only have a dozen or so European tourists, we’re certainly being recognised, and we frequently have people, especially children, call out hello to us (I probably disappoint them if they are looking to practice their English, as I’ll reply back with xin chao).

The next dinner stop was along the beachfront road for more seafood, this time it was the nail snails in a tamarind sauce, oysters grilled with an almost satay sauce, and then some large prawns, grilled and served in a creamy butter sauce, accompanied by a Bivina lager (in a half pint with another chunk of ice). As always the seafood was delicious, not overcooked, and full of flavour. It was also under $20.

Quy Nhon, it would have been great if there were a few more things to do, but as a place to relax and eat fresh, delicious, cheap seafood it’s hard to beat. It’s also somewhat unspoiled by large influxes of western tourists, so we’re not being constantly hassled unlike we were last visit in Sapa. It has meant that we’ve been relying on our phones for translating things, as there’s rarely a version of the menu in English, and the hotel staff aren’t as fluent as more visited places, but we’re getting by.

Would I come back? Possibly. I’ll make a lot of exceptions for a place that was such an abundance of wonderful seafood at these kind of prices.

Tomorrow we’re up early for the 7am train to Da Nang, where we’ll see if the seafood there compares to Quy Nhon.