Quan Lan is beautiful

08.08.2014

This weekend can be immediately classified as a success. Wow.

I woke up early to check on the status of my interview for a job in Honduras. The recruiter hadn't replied yet, so I told her I was going to the beach for the weekend and could do an interview on Sunday. Yep, no problem, she replied to me just before I went out the door.

At eight, I went to buy my ferry ticket and surprise surprise, there was a boat leaving at ten thirty, with express service to Quan Lan. Excellent. I packed my bag quickly and headed out onto the boat.

It was predictably empty, because I'm sure this is a special summer run. I sat on a bench in the stern and of course, this obnoxious family sat right next to me. The woman started inching over into me until she was smooched up against my shoulder, even though there was plenty of room on the other side of her husband. She was just too afraid to tell him to move over I guess? I noticed he kept getting closer and closer to her as she smooched up against me. Finally, I couldn't take it any more and got up and sat in the giant space beside her husband. Ugh.

So, I sat there happily for a while until I spied two French men inside the boat. I asked them where they were going and they named this crazy expensive place. So much for tagging along with them. They offered to call the hotel and see if there was a room tonight for me, but I declined. It had its own private beach, so I was tempted.

When I got back to my seat, that same stupid lady was sleeping in my spot. I pushed her legs over and she moved. What a retard. Why do people just have to take up the most space possible when they are in public?

When we got to Quan Lan, I just got on the first bus I saw, thinking it was going to the beach, but I just ended up getting dropped off at a random hotel. A very nice pharmacist woman brought me exactly to the beach after she realized what happened to me.

I spent the rest of the afternoon napping, swimming and sunning on what amounted to my own private beach anyway. Fantastic.

At one point, a woman with very dirty crooked teeth and a triangle hat came up to me and grunted. She had a white burlap sack over her shoulder. I quickly realized she only wanted my empty beer cans. What service! So I gave them to her and went back to the serious business of snoozing and "filling in" my tan.

The water was a lot cooler than on Ngoc Vung and the waves were a lot more violent and exciting. I spent a good part of the day just jumping around in them. Also, there was not a lot of garbage and hardly any noticeable crabs and other creatures crawling around. Besides that woman and an older man with his dog, I was the only one there. There were also a bunch of tables set up waiting for customers, and a karaoke machine that occasionally blared for no one, but other than that I was totally alone.

Later on in the afternoon, my pharmacist friend and her family came to swim for about thirty minutes along with some local people. One teenage girl came to talk to me, she was annoying so I told her goodbye and she left. Soon after, she came back and blatantly took pictures of me snoozing on the beach. I told her to stop and she kept taking pictures, so I got up and tried to grab it out of her hands and smash it, but she held onto it and started taking pictures again. I grabbed my towel and chased her down the beach screaming. This was the second time someone just HAD to take a picture of me half naked on the beach without asking. A man did it to me last weekend, but I thought it was a fluke. This time, I was furious. Now I know how those poor actresses feel when their butts end up on the cover of grocery store magazines. All they wanted to do was relax for a bit, but people had to go and take photos of them in their face, even after they said no. The worst part is for them it gets published everywhere. At least for me, it's only a bunch of stupid Vietnamese people who will look at the pictures and giggle.

At this point, I felt like my skin was getting crispy, so I went to find a place to sleep. The first place I saw was also recommended in the Lonely Planet, so I stayed there for 200,000. One of the people that ran it asked if I wanted to "have dinner at my grandparents' house" and of course, I said yes for 100,000 more VND. So dinner and a hotel added up to fifteen dollars, Canadian. This part is important for later: I gave the woman at the hotel 500,000 and she gave me back change. I didn't count it, because these people were so friendly, I felt they weren't going to fleece me anyway. I just shoved it in my wallet and went on my way. I assumed she had given me back 200,000 which would pay for everything.

After another nap, they brought me to this mansion on the other side of the village. When I got there a bunch of white twenty-somethings were rolling spring rolls at a long table while sitting on cheap plastic chairs.

"What… hahahaha…. What…. is…. this…. some sort of class?" "No, they are just trying this." The woman in charge said.

"Hahaha… ohhhhkayyyyy…." This was Grandma's house, and these were her tour group friends, having dinner. Eyeroll.

While it was absolutely delicious, it definitely was not what I was expecting at all. Nobody wanted the shrimp cooked with the skin and heads on, so I just chowed down on that. I also had three enormous spring rolls with spinach and rice. Nummy num num.

The tour group entertained me with bland conversation and then I walked back to my hotel for a good sleep before my ferry ride back home.

I walked to the dock, because it wasn't far at all and boarded the boat. As I was waiting for it to leave, the guy from the hotel chased me down and said that I didn't pay for dinner. "Um… yes I'm pretty sure I did. I paid the woman with the long hair five hundred, but I don't know how much she gave me back."

"She gave you three hundred back."

I checked my wallet, but it was all full of small bills and I have no idea which ones are the the change I got last night.

"OK, I honestly don't know, I didn't count it and there's no receipt or anything, so…"

And he turned and walked away. It really made me sad because I didn't know what change I got, for real, and if I owed so much, why did they give me back too much change. I gave them FIVE HUNDRED, they could have given me back any change they wanted. Sigh. I'm not sure if he was just trying a trick. People have tried to trick me so many times here, who ever knows anymore? Double sigh. When they didn't kick me off the boat for lack of payment, I was relieved and headed back home to town again.

Quan Lan beach