Our travel was booked with Futa Bus Lines (Phuong Trang), whose distinctive orange buses we had seen around town. Stepping into the vehicle, we couldn't believe how luxuriously we were to travel. Many of the fleet are fitted with near fully reclining seats, comfortably upholstered. We were provided with a blanket, water, air conditioning and WiFi, and could relax almost horizontally for the journey without crashing the seat into the knees of the passenger behind, owing to the ingenious way the seats are tesselated.
When booking, the assistant asked whether we wanted a seat upstairs or downstairs. Imagining a double-decker bus, I opted for 'upstairs'. This turned out to be the top bunk of the seating arrangement, accessed by a small stepladder. The coach has three rows of seats across the two levels, making space for 45 passengers in total. A regular bus of similar size has an occupancy of around 53, but in much less comfort. National Express take note!
At 145k dong (£4.40) for a one-way ticket, we were travelling in very affordable style. We breakfasted on some pastries we had bought from a Japanese-inspired bakery (Breadtalk) - the kind where you walk around with a tray and a pair of tongs, choosing from the soft and sweet baked goods.
On entering the bus, we were asked to remove our shoes and put them in a small plastic bag. This commitment to cleanliness was remarkable and made me a little furtive in pulling out our food and openly tearing chunks of bread, lest we be reprimanded for contaminating the coach with crumbs. Pulling in for a rest stop, we were given green flip-flops to use when outside the bus.
On the bus, I began Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel, which is written with an enviable articulacy, and echoes well the anxieties of journeying abroad. In the first chapter, he references a misanthropic character from literature, Jean des Esseintes, who finds the chasm between his imagination of a place and the vulgar reality of actual experience so disappointing that he resolves never to go anywhere again. This, De Botton explains, is due to the simplification of both anticipation and memory, in which the mundane aspects of travel are glossed over, either in the planning or in the retelling. However, it is just the everyday aspects of the journey - having breakfast, getting from A to B, negotiating a price - that make the trip special. The 'standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon' moments are few and far between, so the art of travel is in savouring the interstitial moments.
In the afternoon, the bus pulled up at our hotel in Ham Tien, a few miles outside of the Mũi Né peninsula. We checked in at Hai Yen and were shown to our room.
Vowing to go straight to the beach, we slathered ourselves in sun cream. It seemed to take forever apply the lotion, followed by dithering over what to take and what to leave behind. K asked me to rub some cream onto her back only after I had cleaned my hands. I protested and found myself silently agreeing with Des Esseintes - perhaps it would have been better to stay at home. However, having walked to the pool, which is directly on the sea front, my curmudgeonly grumblings were cast into faintly ridiculous relief in the presence of the vista before us.
The beach is a strip stretching to Mũi Né in one direction and to Phan Thiết in the other, with a gently lapping sea extending as far as the horizon, where it slices the otherwise unbroken pale blue sky.
We furnished ourselves rapidly with cold water and a beer and seated ourselves for a ringside view of the sea. I took a photo of the beer bottle glinting in the sunlight; it looks like an advert.
After cramped city life, this setting was paradise. The hotel was sparsely occupied. As far as we could tell, we had the place to ourselves, as this is, laughably, 'low season'.
The sea had a few heads bobbing up and down and a number of fishing boats. One fisherman cast his net from a perfectly hemispherical vessel, which he had propelled out to sea by stirring a single oar in the water.
Inevitably, one cannot enjoy the present for long without unconscious thoughts blundering in unbidden. Just as De Botton describes, my mind started to wander to booking the bus back to HCMC, where we will find dinner this evening, whether the price for a motorbike we had been quoted is fair, as well as the usual slight feeling of guilt at such opulence in contrast to the perceived notion of 'proper travelling' (see K's blog for a more thorough and perceptive handling of this issue). These were trivial matters indeed, but indicate how challenging it is to remain mindful of the current moment.
In the dwindling sunlight, we took a stroll along the beach. Palm trees leaned up and out over the beach, craning towards the setting sun, which cast the fishing boats in striking silhouette. On the horizon, a towering thundercloud lit up orange like a jellyfish, but advances no further.
For dinner, we ventured only a few steps to a most agreeable beach-front bar and restaurant called Pogo's. Being essentially a holiday destination, mainly European/Mediterranean food seems to be available locally, which baffled us given the taste and quality of Vietnamese fare. Thankfully we found a coconut soup on the menu that came in a bowl the size of one of the round fishing boats and contained a frankly obscene amount of lemongrass and tofu. Accompanying this was a chilled glass of white wine from Đà Lạt, whichfar surpassed my expectations, tasting aptly of longan and dragonfruit (a similar, but more prosaic description of its flavour would be melon and kiwi fruit).
By this time, the sea had turned a dark void, absent of all light save for a string of twinkling pearls across the horizon, courtesy of the ships out at sea, balanced precariously on the knife-edge between sea and sky.
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