Cairns Road Trip Day 8: life is a beach

 Walking Queensland beaches in the morning, swimming in our pool after breakfast, and then into the table lands exploring monster figs,and crater lakes and fishing Lake Tinaroo.

Hoi An, Cua Dai Beach

After breakfast we set off with Cuong to Cua Dai Beach on a boat. The trip along the river was beautiful, passing many fishing boats, duck farms, beautiful thatched houses and the old market on the riverbanks. The boat captain made Liam a flower out of a water coconut leaf, which was quite clever. The trip in the boat took about an hour and a half to get to the resort, and it was a short walk from there to the beach. The beach was really beautiful, with warm water, nice clean sand, mountains off in the distance and lines of umbrellas and deck chairs placed along the beach by the little beach side restaurants, which in return for their use you were expected to buy at least a drink.

Michelle sat in the shade and had a drink while us boys all went swimming. There were lots of tourists on the beach and almost as many if not more people trying to sell stuff. Beaded jewelry, toys, food, manicures. One lady even wanted to shave Michelle's legs!

Then it was onto lunch at the beachside café under the shade. There was a cool breeze blowing off the water while we gorged ourselves on seafood - fish, squid, spring rolls and lots of cold drinks. Lovely.

After lunch we headed back to Hoi An on the boat, again a very relaxing tour. We had traveled on quite a few boat rides on this holiday. Liam had never traveled on a boat before in his life, and he had certainly made up for it over the past 2 weeks!

We walked back to the hotel past the Japanese Bridge, stopping in at the tailors to test the fit of the clothes. The suit jacket seemed a bit tight, but everything else fitted perfectly.

China Beach and Mountains of Marble

Michelle spent most of the night up with Liam while he vomited and had diarrhea throughout the night. Liam felt better when he woke up but he was still a little seedy all day.
We started off the day by taking a minibus from Hue to Lang Co Beach. We were accosted by teenage kids on the beach trying to get foreign money and an old fisherman who offered a photo pose for small change. The beach was nice - but it was an overcast and misty day: not very good for taking photos.

As we continued south, we travelled over the Hai Van pass. It was a fairly hair raising trip with steep S bends with slow trucks and cars and bikes overtaking on the wrong side of the road. Due to the mist and fog, we couldn't enjoy the views, and we eventually reached the top with some bunker fortifications shrouded in mist. The clouds started to clear as we continued on, and we stopped for a short time to enjoy them.



In Da nang we stopped for lunch at a really nice Chinese Restaurant and stopped off at China Beach. I really enjoyed the TV Series, so wanted to see the actual beach since we were here. The Vietnamese have bad memories of this area, so there were few if any locals here. The beach isn't good for swimming anyway, due to the strong currents and rips, so Liam paddled and jumped in the shallows.



From China Beach we went to Marble Mountain. There were lots of families in the marble trade with small shops lining the streets as we approached the mountain. We looked through the huge assortment of marble carvings on display and bought a nice carved Chinese dragon.




From Marble Mountain we continued through the country side soon arriving in Hoi An. The hotel had a pool up on the roof, which quite impressed Michelle and Liam. We had a light dinner at a restaurant over the road from the hotel, which also had an Internet Cafe, so after dinner and sending some e-mails we retired for the evening, with Michelle and Liam still feeling a bit on the delicate side.