Vung Tau Back Beach (Bai Sau) is where the Vietnamese come to the seaside
When Jamie planned me a surprise romantic weekend out of Saigon for my birthday, I admit I was hoping for somewhere, well, romantic. Instead I got 2 nights in Vung Tau, the place where seaside holidays go to die.
Like some kind of demented Vietnamese Blackpool, tourism here started through this coastal town’s proximity to the big city rather than any particular natural beauty. However, in spite of this, plus decades of pollution coming downstream from HCMC, and extensive drilling by communist oil giant VietSovPetro the place’s popularity with Vietnamese families and sweaty expats has not been dented.
These two such different groups of visitors have taken ground on opposing sides of the peninsular. The former group flocks to back beach where kms of grubby sand, dotted with motorbike-riding spring roll hawkers, await them and they can paddle fully clothed in dubious water as long as they like day. The latter group (most of who work on the oil rigs and ship building) are lured by to front beach, where any actual beach has long since eroded, and been replaced with a seedy strip of beer bars.
By the time we’d found a hotel and had a look at the scenery (what scenery?), the rain had started to fall in boatloads and we retreated to our suitably seedy hotel in low spirits. It’s a sad day when you can write off your holiday destination in the first 20 minutes.
The view from our hotel room. Talk about a washout!
However, life is not as easy as that. If this blog were just to be about a rubbish place then it would not be worth the time to type it out. It’s with pleasure that I can report the quirky joy that you can find in any seemingly tasteless place of leisure.
Although choices for a night out in Vung Tau are largely confined to overpriced seafood buffets on back beach, and undervalued teenage girls on front beach, we did manage to find a good pizza restaurant, where melted cheese did its mollifying and cajoling thing and by the end of dinner we were extolling the virtues of Vung Tau as our first Vietnamese Ironic Mini Break
Entering into the spirit of the place, instead of weeping we cheered each rat we saw on the promenade, played guess the age of the prostitute and her client over beers in an Australian bar and shopped for tacky shell souvenirs at infinite roadside vendors.
Unexpected pleasures: snapping other holidaymakers
To our surprise our ‘silver lining approach’ to this grubby little place brought some moments of genuine pleasure too. Taking snaos of ourselves in irreligious, cheesy poses by the giant concrete Jesus on one of Vung Tau’s mountains, a la Christ the Redeemer in Rio. Watching the locals picnic on the sea wall of front beach, much like the Cubans along El Malecon. And my first trip on a tandem bike, a la Daisy, Daisy – a memory I will treasure forever (and I WAS pedalling, Jamie!).
So despite the fact that it rained most of the weekend, the beach was grubby, the nightlife seed-city, we had a good time in Vung Tau. Just don’t ask me to go again.
Serendipity: we found this etched in the sand on back beach
