Vung Tau: fun, laughs and music

Jessica and I arrived in Vung Tau yesterday for the start of a three-day holiday, a break from work for Jessica, and just an extra treat for me. We took a boat from Saigon at 10.30 and arrived at the seaside town of Vung Tau an hour and a half later, where the sun was beaming down. We hopped in a taxi which drove us erratically along the main road following the seafront towards our hotel. The driver treated us to a mixtape of his, which opened with a loud and badly-recorded copy of Mambo Italiano. Me and Jessica pulled some shapes in the back of the taxi as we whizzed along, feeling thoroughly in the holiday spirit. This was only greatened by the ‘welcome ice-cream’ we received after checking into our pretty little boutique-style hotel. As the journey to get from home to this point from had been so quick and easy, I’m sure I’ve never felt so relaxed and comfortable at the beginning of a holiday, as though we had travelled by private jet or helicopter. At home in Leeds there is no-where I can think of that could be described as a holiday destination within an hour and a half of home. Unless you count walking or camping holidays (which I don’t). Therefore, I didn’t feel the sense of entitlement to a holiday that comes with a long and wearisome journey to your destination, and so all day each little treat came as an unexpected surprise. And it certainly was a day filled with treats and fun.

After the lengthy process of Jessica checking every room in the hotel to find the best one was complete, we headed out for lunch at a seafood restaurant that Jessica had been to before. The hotel had some bikes we could borrow to cycle there. Unfortunately they were all tandem bikes. Worse still, the brakes didn’t work on the one we chose. I’m sure anybody can imagine the scene of the two of us clambering onto a tandem bicycle for the first time, working out how to balance and co-ordinate our pedalling, then setting off down the steep driveway before discovering we couldn’t stop. Jessica was mortified with embarrassment as we cycled along the road to the restaurant, but I enjoyed the novelty and teased her by gaily singing “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do…”.  We ate at Cay Bang, literally ‘big tree’, so named because the building was constructed around a beautiful old tree trunk that is still alive today. We enjoyed a glistening sea view as we ate our crab and squid. We were in the ‘nice part’ of Vung Tau, I was told, and just around the headland are the cheap bars, loud music and ex-pats. Even so, mass tourism is encroaching on Jessica’s preferred part of the city, with one or two large new hotels already in construction.

In the afternoon we played a few games of snooker in the hotel bar, which was good fun because we were both so rubbish. At the start of the second game, Jessica and I delivered three identical shots in a row while trying to split the pack of balls, and each time ended up potting the white ball. For three consecutive attempts the white ball ended up in the one same hole, with the other balls on the table barely nudged. We laughed so much we could barely hold ourselves up. We also chatted with the hotel manager, who was working behind the bar. He was a cool-looking Vietnamese man with a bald head, who wore a Planet Hollywood vest tucked into his black jeans, and put on a good playlist for us.

After this we went swimming in the beautiful hotel pool. At one end were three fountains of water spilling from stone urns. I sat on the edge beneath one of these fountains and posed for a picture, while Jessica walked around the edge of the pool to take a photo from the other side. I watched her walk, and then looked away. When I looked back she had vanished. Maybe those steps at the other side of the pool go further down than I thought, I wondered. Then I saw the manager run towards the pool. Oh dear. Jessica suddenly appeared, standing up from the floor and looking a little lost. She wasn’t watching where she was going, distracted by looking at the camera on my phone, and tumbled down the slippery marble steps, hitting her ankle, knee, bum, elbow and head on one side. She now has some impressive trophy bruises. She cheered up when we spotted a table football set while walking back to the room. We stopped for two games, and we both became very competitive, spinning the players around furiously and whooping and shouting. Jessica said that she was enjoying the game so much that she forgot about the pain!

We went out for the evening, walking along the long main road towards the seafront area of bars and restaurants. We firstly stopped off at Binh An, an expensive resort that Jessica would have liked to have stayed at. We walked through the pretty gardens to the café-bar, where we sat by the window watching darkness envelop the oil rigs and the ships moving silently across the sea. This building was a traditional Chinese home, with a heavy tiled roof, terracotta plastered walls and a tiled floor and woodwork lattices and details on the dark pillars including birds, flowers and Chinese symbols. Jessica told me that this house was once owned by a rich Chinese family in Vietnam and had been moved piece-by-piece from a site in the Mekong Delta, with no nails in the entire construction.  From outside the window we looked down at the pool below, which was a natural pool built out of the rocky sea bed. Here, two identical women wearing colourful swimming costumes, goggles and swimming caps were stretching their bodies, holding onto floats. They also had something attached to their backs, which looked like backpacks but were probably floatation aids. It brought back memories of Victoria Wood’s sketch about swimming the English Channel. I hoped these two strange women were not planning to swim the South China Sea to Indonesia in the dark.

We were the only customers in the cafe, and had come for a late afternoon sweet treat. Jessica ordered a crepe with maple syrup, and I had ordered an apple crepe served with vanilla ice-cream. After a fairly long wait, the crepes arrived, but they did not appear to be the ones we had ordered. Jessica tried to confirm with the waiter what these were, but he barely understood what she was saying to him. Jessica’s crepe was not maple syrup, and mine was certainly not apple, and there was no vanilla ice-cream. Nonetheless, I was so hungry that I couldn’t resist the tasty crepe that had been put in front of me, so I ate it without complaint. Jessica wasn’t happy, though, and took her plate over to the bar for lengthy negotiations with the staff. She returned with a dish of ice-cream for me, which turned out to be coconut-flavoured. Eventually the waiter returned to the table with another plate and announced, “Apple crepe”. He placed it infront of us and my eyes bulged. It was a folded crepe heaving with apple, and a shiny ball of vanilla ice cream on the side. I was still hungry and it took all my strength to refuse this heavenly offering. Two crepes and two ice creams before dinner would be really excessive, and I cursed myself for not waiting longer and demanding the thing I had ordered, like Jessica, who eventually got her maple syrup crepe and was very happy with it. I felt remorseful for a long time afterwards.

Jessica had wanted to see some live music in the evening and asked me to do a search on my phone to find out what was offered in Vung Tau. The first result was the Black Pearl, a pirate-themed bar with a local live band and salsa and flamenco nights. I noted the address, and we began a very long walk along the bay heading in this direction. After a while we passed a salon called Pink’s, which was naturally pink all over, although confusingly, it was described as a men’s salon. Jessica had been looking to have her hair washed, so we went inside. While she was shampooed, I decided to have a manicure and pedicure, a real treat, particularly as it is dirt cheap compared to prices at home.

We walked further along, passing a school where a hundred children were practising martial arts. We stood and watched the cute younger kids doing backwards rolls on a mat. Above the entrance of the school was a painting of Ho Chi Minh hugging a child. I asked Jessica if all schools in Vietnam feature a painting of Ho Chi Minh hugging a child above the entrance, because that is the impression I have got so far. She said yes. Later we found an Italian restaurant called David’s with a wood-fire oven, where we shared a vegetarian pizza. The outside seating was very relaxing, with perfect ambient lighting and comfy seats. After tea we continued along the road, counting down the house numbers towards where the Black Pearl was supposed to be. The road became quiet, with few buildings and only lots of teenagers sat on the sea wall next to their parked motorbikes. It began to look unlikely that we’d find anything. But as soon as we turned the corner the street was lit up again with another stretch of bars, and we finally found the Black Pearl. Inside it was massively over-staffed with waiters in relation to the amount of people in there, as it was a weekday evening. The male staff wore pirate costumes and the female staff wore very little. At least five waiters flocked around every new table to be seated, clumsily crowding us without being of any use. Soon they left us alone to watch the live band and drink some cocktails. The band played well-known pop, RnB and rock songs in English. They weren’t bad, although most of the song choices and recommendations were unexciting.

In all it was a very fun day with a lot of laughter, sometimes at the expense of Jessica, which is always the best kind of humour.