When I turn 46, I say "No more nonsense": An end to sloth, rising to rescue rides & Thap Banh It

I sleep until 5:30. Nice.

7:30
YES, I'm driving to the market for a Banh Mi cha lua. Need to eat regular Viet food again, instead of just living of the sugar in the wine !

I found two long skinny ropes on the beach. The two are perfect for my floating-chair project, but I have to remove some barnacles and untangle a vicious knot with a third rope. Good thing I have my SHARP knife.
I don't have to go into details, do I? A minor detail: blood gushing from a cut on a thumb leaves surprisingly many round red splashes on the white tiles of my room.

11:30
Time to leave.

Oh, Tam is going home today, so she is asking me for a lift. Pas de probleme ;-)

Somewhere on the desert-dune stretch of the way I slap an imaginary bug on my shirt and my thumb starts bleeding like a pig again. HOW to stop it? I've already dripped blood all over the scooter, my backpack, the pavement and don't want to ruin a shirt, so I wrap some undies around the thumb.

This is how I stop in front of two women in their 60s or 70s at the side of the road who wave me down a few kilometers later. Blood-stained underwear wrapped around my thumb. They wanted to go from Quy Nhon to Bai Xep but the bus drove them too far. About 10-12 km too far, LOL. They speak NO Viet and have no translator with them. Not a functioning smart phone, and not even a book. My phone is still not getting any reception. The SIM card must be loose again. My Vietnamese is enough to express to locals that "Two Woman Want hand-waving-move-gesture Bai Xep". The kid even understands and says in English "1 hour 30 minutes". Very good, but without Translator no one can figure out WHAT will happen in 1.5 hours, LOL.

I end up taking ONE of the two French women to Bai Xep. LOVELY older and voluminous woman and she's scared going down the Bai Xep hill clamping onto me from the backseat with all her body volume. My BACK is covered in sweat when we make it to Life's a Beach, LOL.
Recovering with a Gin & Tonic, I shove a piece of paper behind my SIM card. THAT seems to fix it for NOW.
NOW I also can talk to Madame in FRENCH, LOL.
I check her iPhone and realize that she has a Viet SIM card but didn't enable cell data. Isn't there something I say frequently about your typical iPhone user? LOL. Her menu is in French, but I still manage to turn OFF her Bluetooth, turn ON her cell data and to install Google Translator on her phone. NOW she speaks Vietnamese, LOL.

The Fish & Chips at Life's a Beach is not ALL that bad, although the fried batter tastes and feels like soggy underwear ....

The Bai Xep Beach of the present and past

The Bai Xep of the future. SCARY !

14:00
Time to head to Quy Nhon. Now that I've eaten a half-way decent meal, I'm not too sure whether I really want to stay there. I miss my beach already, LOL.

14:30

17:30
Another hotel guest: An American woman from New Orleans. She just arrived from Quang Ngai (I'm willing to bet that she visited My Lai). In a cheap train, i.e. no A/C. Her train had to wait for 6 hours for the broken-down train in front of her to be moved. Yup, it's HOT.

A quick shower and walk to get some wine, coffee, and cheese from Coopmart.

18:45
Hotel-Man already whispered to me earlier that he made Banh Xeo FOR ME when he saw my reservation. They keep coming up with NEW ways that make it impossible with me to refuse the dinner invitation.

Madame even pointed at the Western table again with a questioning look. NO, NO special treatment for the guest who will squat on the floor even if I will have a hard time getting up again ;-)

NO, those prawns are NOT peeled before they become integral part of the Banh Xeo

Creme Brule as dessert? With ice coffee on top? OMG.....

I shouldn't have left My Beach; I'm going to get FAT on this trip, LOL.

21:00

4:30
That should be enough sleep.... especially considering my plan for this morning...

6:15
I meet another hotel guest. He's Bruce from Oregon, Pleiku & Robston Street. And he was stationed in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive. But all he can talk about is how a Viet woman 'banged him six time in one night'. Yes, she WAS looking for a way out of that HELL. And Americans ARE STRANGE !

Time to ride off ....

More of Future vs Past

Morning mist over the river & Thap Banh It

I follow the route displayed on Google Maps. Where the hell is that turn-off? I have to backtrack several times but then I find it:

durch diese hohle Gasse ...

When I follow the route to the end there is NOTHING except a dog, a cow, and two women on their door steps, one of whom smiles after I point at the towers above and with her whole arm indicates the correct way to get to them. Nowhere NEAR where Google Maps was leading me, but on the opposite side of the hill, LOL.
When I get to the REAL entrance at 7:05 , there is a guy on a scooter just opening the gates. I'm his FIRST customer and I get to pay the 12,000 VND entrance.

BIG parking lot for ONE scooter, LOL

Now that is a nice place to be buried !

As with anything worthwhile, one has to work for it ....

As I approach the tower at the top of the steps, I realize that it's a GATE tower, and that there will be stairs beyond....

the view through the Gate Tower

Finally I have the Gate Tower below me ;-)

Not quite a Roman mosaic

But I'm far from done climbing....

Yes, there is quite a bit of NEW concrete/new bricks in there ....

the Fire Tower

There is a room in the Main Tower with a kind of shrine in it. I'm still standing outside when I SMELL something. NO, it's NOT pee; it's MUCH WORSE than pee! And I notice that the floor seems WET. Bird shit? Bat droppings? Let's call it GUANO. There is NO WAY I'm going in there; let's use the camera's tele zoom.