Afternoon scooter trip to My Son

Having spent yesterday relaxing a bit we had renewed energy today to go exploring. We rented a scooter at the homestay and headed for the beach which is only a few kilometres away. Not to stay at the beach but just to check it out for our planned beach day tomorrow.

It was busy once we got there late in the morning but walking a bit away from the parking lot and things seemed a lot more quiet. Perfect for us tomorrow. Back on the scooter we drove towards My Son - the jungle temple area close to Hoi An. According to Google Maps it was around 40 kilometres away and following the suggested route on Maps we were taken through narrow local roads, villages and a few dirt tracks on our way towards My Son. Around 10 kilometres from My Son we stopped for lunch at a place next to the road side. Local food, limited menu but good.

Then we continued the last bit of the way to My Son and found the main entrance. It was hot in the afternoon and very quiet with only a few parked cars and some scooters. We left ours, bought tickets, walked to the shuttle bus and were dropped off for the walk around the main temple area.

It is not Angkor Wat (not even remotely close) or some of the other temple areas we've seen in Myanmar, but it is nice, well maintained and the ruins are really pretty when you also take into account that they were damaged during the war and restoration has only been going on for a decade or so. Not many people in the afternoon which we found really nice.

We spent around 1½ hours at the temples, then back to the main entrance and spending just a short time at the excellent exhibition at the museum. It might have deserved a closer look but we also had around 1½ hours of driving ahead of us to get back to Hoi An, so we headed home and went directly down town to look for one of the tour companies hoping to book another easy rider trip from Hoi An to Hue.

As we stopped to get directions we bumped into Julie and Jen from last night and as we stood there sharing the experiences of the day a local guy pointed at the rear wheel of our scooter - flat tire. Good timing though being so close to home. Mikkel managed to push the scooter back to the homestay and we met there and searched for another office with easy riders. Eventually we found a place but nobody home. We headed home for showers, clean clothing and a dinner cooked by the nice lady at our homestay. Long day and lots of experiences and a both feeling a bit tired we still managed to do a short walk to a local bar serving the Vietnamese "Fresh beer" - or draught beer to us Europeans. But it sounds great with fresh beer - and it tastes good too.

Red Lightning

Checking out the beach

At the entrance to My Son

Temples and ruins

Impressive inscriptions 

Late afternoon temple

Exhibition of impressive carved stones

Yes, we've done a lot of those places on this trip

Hungry scooter

Heading home on local roads

Dinner at the homestay

Coffee-ish

Fresh beer

Phu Quoc Bai Sao beach - garbage and construction madness

Some of the others partied hard last night. This morning tt was pretty easy to see who went to bed early and who'd had a lot of drinks. Most of us wanted to go to the beach so the decision was to meet later on Bai Sao beach some 25 kilometres from our resort. We needed to rent a scooter before heading there or anywhere so the others left, we went for scooter rental and eventually made it to the beach around 12 and met with some of the others.

There were a lot of people on the beach and generally busy around the restaurants. We went for a swim in the ocean and we constantly bumping into pieces of plastic and other floating trash. Such a petty for a nice beach. Looking at the beach it became quite obvious that there is a lot of construction going on and that garbage is left in piles on the beach itself. The locals put it on fire once in a while so at the other end of the beach there was a huge plume of smoke. We took a walk on the beach later in the afternoon and it was just so depressing to see the plastic and garbage everywhere.

Heading home to our own place also gave some input to think about. The whole island is more or less one big construction zone - partially finished sewage pipes, some already full of grey water, others half dug in the ground, pedestrian areas partially finished, construction materials left here and there and so on. No doubt that the island has a lot of potential but there is some way to go and if you look for quiet places go to Thailand - there are plenty of good options there.

We brought food back to our resort and had sushi for dinner before going down to our "own" beach across the street for drinks at one of the beach bars. The mood there was perfect, a quite big place, but not too noisy and not too crowded. And then we spent the rest of the evening and part of the night having drinks and enjoying the company from our place. It's still great to be on Phu Quoc.

Bai Sao beach

Looks great from a distance

Lots of trash on the beach and in the water