Holiday in Vietnam - DaNang

Tracy had to go to the airport to pick up Jordan's tennis gear which she left at OR Tambo Airport - so our holiday got off to the very positive start of not having to cram into a taxi with all our bags.

The first place we stayed at looked the part in a lot of ways - cool villas, lush surroundings etc.  It was snorting hot and humid throughout.   As soon as Ev got going on something he went a nice red colour (this was the aftermath of a game of One Bounce - with the ball ending up in someone else's villa - who wasn't in it at the time).  The people were great - the food was INEDIBLE - which was a problem in that the resort was a long way out of the town.  We moved after a couple of days.

Aiden aims a piece of grass from the roof of our Villa out of it's door in the falling evening light.

This is China Beach, which was the surf and sun hangout for a while for US troops during the war, at which time Da Nang was the major US Airbase.   I say for a while because we were told by a Vietnamese guy that the Viet Cong got wise to the spot being the US R&R site, and infiltrated snipers into the area to pick off people riding the shore-break (which was conspicuous by it's absence in our time there).  The beach is massive - probably 15kms long - white sand, spotlessly clean with crystal clear water.

The outskirts of Da Nang along the beach were something of a wasteland - though in the interests of accuracy it should be said that the absence of a whistling motorcycle in the picture is something of an achievement photographically.  The zebra crossing is, I venture, largely decorative.

Inside the town things were a bit greener, quite quaint little streets and houses.  We were walking along this road because we had heard that there was a landmark restaurant experience called Tam's Pub and Surf Shop - which reputedly had the best burgers in the whole of Vietnam (some say Asia), and had been a feature of the town right back to the war days - so something of a western institution.  After the horrors of a couple of days of badly done Vietnamese food (three meals a day of it) there was a lot of traction for the burger idea (Ev dissenting with a hunger for Spag Bol).  So we kept walking, expecting I'm not sure what -  until we got to it.  "It" turned out to be more like a garage and repair shop with a whole lot of photos, and various bits of junk, interspersed with dogs and cats - and a couple of small tables.  The bloke running it was extremely relaxed, and very nice.  To our delight the burgers were indeed terrific - sadly for Ev the Spag Bol was not.  So he drank several litres of very sweet lime juice instead and felt ill.

Chilling in Tam's.  The photos were very interesting and very moving actually.  For example, on the wall to the left and behind Ev's head (above the jeep) is a photo of a helicopter gunner standing in the door of his helicopter.  It's probably a bit hard to see, but in the bottom corners of the frame are photos of the same guy, recently taken.  On the other wall - next to where I am taking the photo - was a magazine article with his recent picture from a local magazine.  The gist of it was that he hadcome back to Vietnam and started working on a number of self funded projects related to reconstruction and development of the country - after 30 years of trying to live with himself and the things he had done.  Next to him was a photo of a Vietnamese soldier with a caption saying that he had been wounded 14 times in 54 months of action.  An all-round nasty bit of business.