Vung Tau, part 2

#5, our beach house

When we walked back to the beach house on Wednesday night, the roads were clear and the parking lot empty. Thursday morning only 8 am, and the parking lot was full with extended vans, and the beach was crowded. It was a great day for being outside, not overly hot and sunny, just perfect. Vung Tau (about 128 km SE from HCMC)is not the best beach around here, there is some trash and the water is a muddy brown due to pollution from oil drilling (thanks Lonely Planet!), but it's comfortable, has a large town to support it, and is the closest one to HCMC - most people in for the holiday were locals getting out of the city, not foreigners.

The peninsula that juts out into the South China Sea is punctuated by Small Mountain and Big Mountain. Atop Small Mountain is a humongous statue of Jesus (30 m high) with arms outstretch, open towards the ocean. Chi Linh and I were heading up there that morning.



I have no idea how high up the climb was (and apparently google doesn't either?) and yes it was relatively easy walk up the rather steep staircase. The climbing was fine and it wasn't very sunny, just humid; but for some reason I was the sweaty American and everyone else, including Chi Linh, looked FINE. hrmpf.



On the way up to the top, there are many places to stop and enjoy the view, sit on a bench, have a picnic, and rest your legs. Breathtaking. Many of these "resting areas" had religious statues or tablets with stories. And they all had small white benches that were inscribed with a donors' name and location - many donors were from the US, with a large amount from Philadelphia, PA! Whoa, didn't realize there was a large Vietnamese population in Philly? Maybe it is associated with a Catholic church, but it was really neat to read the locations of the many benches.



Within 30 minutes, we made it up to the top. There was a large sitting area, and people where everywhere - sleeping, eating, resting, talking...it was a great view and you work so hard to come up here, why not spend a few hours?? The statue was sitting on a base that you could climb up...and even climb up a smaller staircase within the statue to reach the top of the arms. But there were many people waiting and so we stayed at the base, still an incredible sight to see!





The climb down was much easier and then we headed back to the hotel to clean up and check out - I also walked on a beach a bit and watched people swim, eat ice cream, and play in the water. The water was warm and it was really great day to be out and about. There were so many people, but the beach was large enough that it didn't feel suffocating. It was interesting to note that most people did not wear bathing suits but just cotton shorts and t shirts - why spend money on something when you can just wear other clothes?



We went to another popular place in town for lunch, more seafood! Fried oysters, another sweet and sour soup, fish and chicken in clay pots, and rau muong (one of my favorite asian veggies, like a spinach), all at around $35.



We had to go through town in order to get back onto the highway to HCMC and the traffic was so bad because of so many people on the streets - walking, motorbike, stuffed into vans...parking lots were so full, I really didn't expect so many people to be there! I slept the whole way back and woke up in the city - where there were still people out and about - but with most shops closed and less people on the streets, it felt almost empty. And so ended our trip to the beach!