I headed alone to Son My, approximately 3 hours south of Hoi An right along the coast, while Amy stayed to enjoy a free day in Hoi An.
Purpose 1: to visit the memorial site commemorating the 1968 My Lai massacre

Purpose 2: to visit Me Khe beach, Vietnam beach #5 & final, which is located just a 10 minute drive from the memorial
It was supposed to be a 3-hr drive each direction but bc my hired driver was a maniac, he cut the whole trip down to 4 hours. No complaints here as it shortened my long day & I survived. My visit to the My Lai memorial roughly coincided with the 48th anniversary of the horrific massacre of 504 local unarmed Vietnamese by the US Army.  The war crime was one of the pivotal moments of the war that shaped the US & worldwide perceptions of our involvement. It was a very somber, disgusting, embarrassing visit. There weren’t many other visitors but those present certainly seemed to be Vietnamese locals & I admit I got a few weird looks & questions if I was American. The highlight of that visit was after I had finished w the sickening museum tour & exited outdoors to see the memorial & the remnants of the torched village, I was approached by two darling university students who stake out the place just in hopes an English speaker shows & they can practice. I agreed to chat so we talked for maybe 20 minutes & they rapidly fired questions including heavy topics like how & when I learned about the massacre & why I was visiting to lighter subjects explaining certain slang terms. I found interesting that not only do they take a ton of courses to learn English, but they also take several intonation courses to “change the way their voice sounds”. Kinda crazy & a moment of reflection where I felt especially lucky to be a natural born speaker of what is now becoming the common language of the world.
As I didn’t want to travel that distance to only be depressed by My Lai, I made sure to stop at this local beach, Me Khe, a mere 10 minute drive from the site of those atrocities. My LP book had a quick blurb on it explaining it was massive, stunning & super isolated & that was all that was needed for me to negotiate a stop at the beach on the return trip. It was easily the most beautiful beach I’ve seen in Vietnam. Isolated & the whitest sand but there’s certainly proof of activity as a portion of the beach was dotted w fishing boats, abandoned by their fishermen as it was now early afternoon, as well as goalie nets on either end of an imagined football field. It was pretty sweet. There wasn’t much else around there but that is the place I’d come back to & rent a room & just do nothing for a couple months.