After we left the church (see: Sunday Service, Statues and Surprises) we drove almost to the end of the Corniche and parked up the bike as we could see a lone woman crouched on the shoreline sorting out a catch. We were too far away to see what the catch was so decided to investigate.
The beach is edged by a wall, I assume as a sea defence and is about four foot high. At various points there are concrete steps so that people can get over, but as the Vietnamese people like to ride their motorbikes on the beach a huge pile of earth and sand had been banked against either side. This enables bikes to ridden up and over the wall easily. We decided against it as we would have been weaving in and out of the fishing boats and we both fancied a walk.
High up on the beach were lots of the woven fishing boats laid on their sides but there were one or two anchored on the shore line having recently landed their catches. The bay curves round to the right and ends with a rocky outcrop. If the tide went out far enough and you could walk around the rock to the beginning of Hải Hòa Beach where the restaurant on stilts is.
We wandered down the beach in between the boats until we got to the hard packed sand left by the receding tide. This beach is much quieter than Hải Hòa so when there was a lot of movement off to our left ML and I both turned to see what it was. A sight I never envisaged that’s for sure.
By the sea defence wall there was a herd of cows who with a little bit of encouragement were climbing the steps and then stepping over the wall and climbing down the other side. There must have been a dozen of them, some adult and some calves, all a beautiful glossy orangy brown. Once they had all negotiated the climb over the wall they set off down the beach heading slowly towards the shoreline, although one or two of them did have a little bit of a canter (Can a cow canter?) before returning to a more sedate pace. I can only think that there must have been some accessible greenery on the rocky outcrop.
I know horses are taken on sand to build stamina, fitness levels, muscles and strength, I’m not sure that any of those are necessarily high on the list of attributes for a Vietnamese cow. Although of course I may well be maligning this hardy species and maybe they are really undercover racing cows. I know that cows are raced in India and Indonesia so why not Vietnam. Maybe there is inter village/commune rivalry and these are the training ground for Hai Thanh. Oh flights of fancy but wouldn’t it be brilliant if it was true.
Looking through the magnifying lens of the camera I could see a couple of woman searching amongst some rocks at the high tide point. I think they were probably looking for shellfish of some sort and higher up on the hillside there were people visiting one of the family graves.
After the excitement of the cows had died down ML and I carried on walking down towards the lady on the beach. It turns out the catch she was sorting was jellyfish. But unlike the ones we saw last week these were very large and had been caught in nets further out at sea. We watched her flip the jellyfish onto its back and she cut off the tentacles, some bits she kept others she discarded. She then scraped off any remaining flesh from underneath and cut the large flat body into small pieces.
She was very busy and we both smiled at each other but we didn’t disturb her and after taking a few photographs we left her to her work. We had a stroll along the beach and then headed back to the bike for a drink as it was now getting very hot and humid.
We set off again and took one of the side roads only to stop at the sight of a deserted building. From the lettering and the yellow stars on the gateway it was once an official building but had now has fallen into disrepair.
The decorated gates were rusty and bits were missing, wooden shutters and doors were rotting or missing and plants were taking over the roof. But not surprisingly the grass was beautifully cropped close to the ground, thanks I’m sure to the local cows.
I would like to have gone in an investigated but didn’t feel brave enough, I’m sure the building was full of spiders and countless other creepy crawlies and I decided to err on the side of caution and leave it to them.
Talking of buildings an update on the new build – when we got back from our ride on Sunday two lorry loads of bricks had been delivered.
How do I know it was two lorry loads?
Well unlike lots of countries the bricks do not arrive in neat piles on pallets, they just fill the back of a lorry with loose bricks and when they get to their destination they are just tipped out onto the ground. This makes a huge mound of jumbled bricks for the builders to use. As there are two piles of a similar size I have deduced à la Sherlock Holmes that there are two lorries worth.
On Monday morning they started building brick walls between the concrete pillars that the builders cast last week. They are building them to a height of about 5 foot or 1.5m before moving onto the next one, they are building the fifth one as I look out of the window. They are mixing the cement by hand and transporting it by wheelbarrow. For those interested footwear today is three pairs of trainers and three pairs of flip-flops and only two of them are wearing hats, one conical straw hat and one flopping cotton sun hat. As if they knew I was writing this a green helmet has come into play. Further updates will follow.
Blog from a Vietnamese Balcony 