Some Faraway Beach

You’ll have noticed that there is less action here than in your average monastery.

That’s because I had to return to the Land of the ( wet ) Moa early in July. On July 29, I returned to Fiji, this time to Wailoaloa beach. Think of it as Denarau for the unheeled.

Since then, I’ve regressed to a shameless and barefoot lack of work. A daily ocean swim, a little online teaching, much more talk than usual, and a lot of good food has been the order of the days.

The major entertainment has been the local wildlife – the staff and guests at the B & B I’m staying in.

The 8 or 9 rooms have housed guests from Algeria, Czechoslavakia, the Ukraine, Togo, the UK, Sri Lanka, Egypt, and of course Aussie and NZ. The guy from Togo , for example, works for the United Nations managing disaster areas, and is now kicking around the South Pacific organising cyclone backup systems. Or something.

The staff at the BnB ( “The Ideal Bed & Breakfast” ) are all Fijian, and nearly all effortlessly laid-back and as funny as a fight. They laugh a lot.

Wame is the Main Man. He’s served in the army, and been part of the Presidential guard. There’s steel, and smarts, under the big smile and the endless jokes. Napoleon, the cook, has taken to calling me  ‘the Young Man’. He’s worked in hospitality on the tourist islands, and it shows in his true Fijian-style cuisine. Knox, cook and general hand, has a sly wolfish grin. He found himself stranded on an island during covid, and survived hunting the wildlife and growing crops. Tuvili is endlessly kind and patient, and also ready with a joke – “get behind, Satan” when offered a rum.

I accidentally became a kind of minor celebrity by booking the longest stay ( 21 days ) in the BnB’s two-month history.

It is literally a “bed and breakfast”, and my attempt to stockpile food without a fridge hasn’t really worked. I’ll explore the local cafes a bit before I leave.

I have four days left here, before I start acting my budget, and return to the Nadi Back Road, about 5 km inland.

Internet

One of the challenges of Fiji in my short time here has been internet speeds. Only one of the three places I’ve stayed in so far had anything like decent WiFi, and that was the Namaka BnB in May.

Hot-spotting my phone using a local data connection has been the best option.

But here in Wailoaloa, I’ve discovered over the last 2 or 3 days that the cafes and restaurants get good speeds. No good for online teaching, which demands privacy, but better than the dial-up-like speeds otherwise on offer.

Dogless

There are packs of stray beach dogs here, and these are no problem. But because this is a tourist hub – maybe two dozen local hostels / hotels / apartments – there are few dogs which are locked up. And of course, that means the nights are mostly a bark-free zone.

Righto. Lunch time.

Moana Sands

After two nights, I finally made it to the beach – 650m down the road.

Twice. First for the morning constitutional ( above), and second for an afternoon swim. .

There were a couple of hundred people on the beach, and enough of swell to catch a wave or two among the kids and boogie-boarders.

At 28  ºC, with the Vitamin D streaming down, just a whisper of wind, and the sap rising, it’s the kind of day even grim old cynics write songs about.

Business as usual

At the risk of sounding complacent, it is pretty much business as usual here in Nha Trang.

Most mornings, I go to the seaside for a morning walk, along with an estimated 500 – 1000 like-minded people. All at once, at any one time between around 5.30 and 7.00 a.m.

The northern Nha Trang seaside is a stretch of about 5km of beachfront, with a 3 or 4 -metre wide paved walking path alongside. And, ideal swimming along most of its length.

So it’s not just me running amok amid chaos, it’s a good slice of Nha Trang. So, about that, and as of the time of writing;

  • Khanh Hoa’s one and only case of the virus recovered, and the province was declared virus-free on February 26.
  • Total number of cases per million population throughout Vietnam – 2.
  • Total cases / million of population in New Zealand – 107.

Vietnam’s testing and isolation seems to have started much earlier, which might account for some of the difference. Either way, it is one of the safer places in the world to be right now.

In other news, and answering a family member’s questions;

  • Getting warmer?

    Yes, it’s … toasty. Usually above 25 deg C for morning walks. Toughest is early afternoons, before the wind gets up, a time many Vietnamese will take refuge in a nap

  • Online students

    Yes, still teaching Japanese adults mainly, although the number of bookings has slowed. I’m not sure whether that’s down to their purse-strings tightening, or my popularity fading a little after an initial honeymoon period.

  • Supermarkets

    .. are open as usual. The larger ones will do customers the service of pointing a device at their foreheads on entering. Taking temperature as a shortcut to virus status.

  • Plane ticket refunds

    I have a one-year credit for the Air New Zealand ticket from Sydney to Auckland. The ticket from Da Nang to Sydney I made the mistake of booking via an agency rather than directly with the airline. That’s proving difficult to recoup. I can re-book for a later date, but that’s not ideal because I don’t yet know when the ( current non-existent ) school term will end.

  • Apartments

    I’m considering a ‘kind’ ( their visitor numbers have obviously plummeted ) offer to return to Moonstone apartments for a rate reduced to just below what I’m now paying at Vinh Quang in the North. Vinh Quang is ideally placed for closeness to the beach, but the dog- and traffic ( horns ) noise is really starting to bug me. I almost started to lose my rag yesterday at a local who was spectacularly … unhelpful. So, maybe time to deal with the stress before it gets too much worse. Moonstone has a better kitchen, it has a couch, and it has less noise from bike horns. It also has a worse dog problem, and is 15 minutes or so further from the beach. Still, it’s something I’m thinking on, I’d love to be free of the bike-horn noise which is like water torture – it’s constant – drip, drip, drip….

Day Tripper

Sitting on one’s chuff is sometimes necessary, but never desirable for long stretches, for fear of growing carbuncles on the underside.

With that in mind, after a morning’s slog over a hot microphone, I took myself off for a jaunt to the south, following the beach along the coastline. Below is roughly the route.

And even further below is what I found. As you see, Nha Trang is achingly beautiful. The beaches are clean, the air is fresh, and even the over-zealous and under-worked security guards didn’t upset my buoyant mood.

Morning Haul

Below is the result of the third order of business for the morning.

Eggs, Pak Choy,tomato

That is, off to the nearby ( 1km ) market, where I scored shown pak choy, a dozen fresh duck eggs, and tomato. Price 45,000 VND ~= $NZD 3.

Which is another thing I love about this place – cheap produce.

Two others are the first and second orders of business for the day. The first, walk on the nearby beach, and the second, a morning cup of genuine potent Vietnamese coffee.

Easy days. But things are about to get tougher, with the scheduled start of school Monday March 2.