Beach adventure time! Bob (Marshall's co-worker here) and his family invited me to join them to the beach. They had arranged a van and driver to take the family to the beach and Bob and a friend were going to ride mountain bikes there and meet us for lunch on the beach. It's still the Tet holiday and the normal 1.5 hour drive turned into three. Usually, that's not a big deal, but with 3 kids and a rambunctious puppy, it was a long 3 hours! Actually, Bob's kids are pretty easy - there wasn't a single temper tantrum and I only heard "are we there yet?" twice :)
Finally at the beach, it was crowded beyond belief! I think this was the annual beach trip for most of the factory workers in the area. There were so many people, it was hard to see the ocean or even sand - standing room only. But the odd thing was that they were all scrunched into a small section of beach - maybe 200 meters of coast. There was plenty of room to spread out, but I thanked they enjoyed the crowded atmosphere. We did not and promptly cut through a restaurant and walked up the nearly deserted beach to a perfect strip of sand.
The water was warm and a lovely shade of jade. Absolutely perfect if you could ignore the plastic bags floating by every now and again.
We spent hours making sand sculptures, digging for clams and shells and swimming.
Every now and again, I would look down the beach at the staggering crowd of people and wonder how that could be enjoyable. Most of them probably drove their scooter here - 3 hours or more of crowded highways and country roads only to go to a beach where there is hardly enough room to lay a towel down. Seems so crazy to me!
Perhaps where we were was technically private property. I know we crossed onto one resort where a security guard was giving us the stink eye and made sure we passed through. But there was just empty, deserted beach right next to them! I guess that's just the difference in culture. We americans like our space - big lawns, our own tables at restaurants, and 3.5 feet of breathing room.
I made a little map to help explain the absurdity of it:
i wonder why they were all packed in that one area...something to do with private beach(as you suspected) or maybe rip tide, something like that? either way, SRO on a hot beach=no fun! you were smart to move on! :)
ReplyDelete