An Bang Beach and Celebrating Ho Chi Minh's Birthday

Erik and I had a killer breakfast at our Hoi An Home, the Ha An Hotel, and then headed out on a 3km ride to the beach on our borrowed bikes. 

Little  did we know the adventurous day that was in store for us!

It began when a seventy year old Vietnamese bicyclist encouraged us to stop at a rice field en route to the beach. 

Figuring there was nothing to lose, and being open to some adventure, we silently followed him into the rice paddy fields.  

There, we passed some free range ducks enjoying a swim amongst the water lilies, but apparently headed to dinner plates in Hoi An based upon the cutting gesture our escort made across his throat as we passed.  

Neither Erik nor I were inclined to share that information with the contented ducks.  

Next, our escort pulled a greenstalk of rice from the ground and pointed the kernels out to us.  

I'd never seen a rice stalk up close before, and truly began to warm to the novelty of this unique adventure featuring no  spoken words between us.  

Suddenly, our escort was waste deep in the water.  

He picked some lotus flowers, returned to our sides to deliver one to each of us, and headed down a concrete causeway, shooing a cow off the causeway during the process. 

We arrived at a small shrine of some sort.   A multi-language plate explained that the shrine honored a Japanese man who'd returned from Japan to Hoi An to be with his Vietnamese lover.  

We placed our lotus flowers in a vase and left a couple of US dollars at the shrine, too, as this was apparently a hybrid shrine and homage to Buddha was apparently expected.  

We said a smiling goodbye to our escort and headed to our next stop; a roadside village that encouraged visitors to wander amongst its vegetable gardens.  Wonderful!

Finally, we arrived at the beach, had a delicious lunch of shrimp fried rice, and got drawn into some kind of celebratory beer fest with a group of four Vietnamese guys at the next table. 

We soon learned they had the day off due to it being Ho Chi Minh's birthday and it quickly became evident that they wanted us to join them in honoring old Ho!

Three cases of beer and one major karaoke event later (a story that's not going to be told here), we left our new, best, dearest friends and returned, via taxi, to our beach.  

There, we swam off "the effects" before making our way back to Hoi An for a good, long nap!