Beaching Hoi An

Hoi An is attractive for the charming ancient town, but it is also a beach town. It takes about 4 km from the ancient town to nearby beaches Cua Dai and An Bang. Cua Dai is also where you catch canoes to Cham Island. Personally I have not been much around Cua Dai area. An Bang is more familiar to me. You can rent a bicycle or motor and go through the Hai Ba Trung street until the very end of it, that is An Bang beach. It's a nice ride through a paddy field, with water buffaloes and cows, very charming.

There are a lot of restaurants for you to choose here and basically if you eat or drink from them you don't have to pay for the beach benches. If you really don't want to be in any restaurant, just go straight to the sandy beaches. There are many local ladies walking around selling food like boiled quail eggs (trứng chim cút), tofu custard (tào phớ), seafood, etc, you can buy from them but I'm not sure how good their foreign languages are. My favorite place to stay for some drink and location is Soul Kitchen. They serve food and drink Western style, but they have very comfy couches and terraces made from bamboo and coconut leaves. I often just drink something here and not eat, because my Viet stomach doesn't feel fine if I don't eat local. There is also an Italian place here called Luna d'Autunno, if you want. Seriously I'm wondering who go to a Viet beach to eat pizza but maybe they serve something more.

So where do I eat? I eat sea food in local restaurant in the same beach front. Just search for restaurants with swimming sea creature, Vietnamese owners and waiters, mediocre interior or architecture style. There you go point the sea food you want to eat and they will cook them up for you.

I will now describe to you how we cook sea food so that you drool your mouth and book a ticket to Vietnam:

- Shells animals like oysters, mussels and other things. You can either boil them up or grill them. In Vietnam, we believe in the Yin and Yang, Fire and Cold of food. We believe that seafood is Cold in its nature, so we boil seafood with a lot of Fire spices like lemongrass, chilli and ginger. That is to make sure you don't feel stomachache for having too much Cold with no Fire to balance out. You dip these sea food in lemon salt pepper, or chilli sauce. You can drink the broth of the seafood and enjoy the spicy heat warming up your whole body, number one guarantee that your stomach will be fine and you are healthy enough to enjoy the whole Vietnam trip. When we grill sea food, it is often with a sauce of fried spring onions and peanuts. Its smell makes you want to order 3 more kilos. They serve the seafood right on its own shells, you pick the shells up and suck ssssslllurrrrppppp the whole thing into your mouth. No cutleries please.

If the shell animals are not farmed but found under deep sea bed, or let's say natural, you can even eat them raw. Open the shells up, squeeze some lemon and just eat. To me I don't like eating like that, it's too much Cold for my belly, and the taste of the seafood is not enhanced by the spices. But if you want to try well, try.

We also drink booze or wine when eating seafood. Same principal, booze is Heating against the Cold of seafood. You can order some wine but now that you are in Vietnam why not try some home brewed booze instead? I guess every restaurant owner will be happy to share you some. We call booze ¨¨ rượu ¨¨ in Vietnamese.

- Shrimps: we have different kinds of shrimps, we don't have lobsters in Hoi An or Da Nang area. Our shrimps are like 4-6 shrimps per kilo I guess, not very sure if that's true though. We boil shrimps the same way we boil other seafood, with lemongrass, ginger, and chilli. Best when you dip in lemon salt pepper or chilli and mayonaise. They will bring you all these dippings, don't worry. We grill shrimps too. But we don't peel the shrimps off, you have to peel yourself. We eat shrimp heads too. We suck the tasty liquid inside shrimps head out, I think it is a waste if you don't do that.

- Crabs: I don't remember if I have eaten sea crab in Hoi An, but I'm not a big fan of sea crabs. It is very big and we tend to boil it up and serve the whole thing. You will have a tool to crack the crabs shells and eat what is inside.

- Fish: We grill, fry fish or cook fish in a soup or very light congee with other herbs and spices. If you order a fish, you can choose to grill its body and cook its head into soup or congee.

Did you know that local people go to the beach from 5-7am and 5-7pm something? Local people don't want sun tan, they avoid the time when the sun is strong. If you go to the beach at let's say 8am, when the tourists haven't waken up yet, I can say you have the whole beach. That was my experience when I live in Hoi An in 2015. I got very nice sun tan on this beach. Standing from An Bang you can see the Cham Island far far away, and looking toward Da Nang on a clear day you can see QuanYin lady blessing the whole land.

Sun in Hoi An can be very strong at noon, be careful with sunburn. I was sunburnt once when I fell asleep under an umbrella during the noon, it was not even that sunny, it was cloudy. Tips when you get a sunburn: store a Nivea cream in the fridge and apply that cold cream on the skin continuously until it soothes you down.

Along the long beach from Da Nang to Hoi An, there are several beaches that are much less touristic or crowded, like Non Nuoc beach. If you are adventurous and just hope on a bike and stop at any potential beach, you will have your own beach there. Thanks to some friends, I have found a beach of my own name, Ha My beach, some km from An Bang, towards Da Nang direction. There was one resort there that has the same name. It is quite empty, basically you can do anything there.