I wanted to visit the beach made famous by all those old Vietnam movies of when the American soldiers, on leave, would surf China Beach. The old China Beach was a 30+km white sand beach stretching south from Da Nang to Hoi An & now it’s known by various other names as it was informally divided by little beach towns dotting the coast. We read (& then confirmed w a drive-by) the old China Beach near Da Nang is all built up & lined w expensive massive resorts while the beaches closet to Hoi An are less developed. One section in particular, called An Bang, has no hotels & only local restaurants lining the beach, is a particularly beautiful stretch, & is an up & coming spot.
We did read on Trip Advisor that people at An Bang aggressively pursue bikers to pay to park in their lot just before the beach. We also read that local beach restos will guard them for free if you sit on their beach chairs & order food & drinks for the day. So we picked out a beach resto & headed off on the 6km bike ride past rice paddies. We quickly learned, upon arrival, the Trip Advisor reviews understated the aggressiveness as there were people yelling at us, one man started in a dead sprint chasing after me (as if he had a chance), & the last line of defense was an older woman frantically blowing a whistle & waving her arms as if she were directing traffic & we were on the other side of the law. I swerved & successfully cycled past those lunatics & made it to the promised land, at which point they gave up their pursuit, ceding victory to me. Amy was not so lucky as she hesitated & slowed down allowing the whistle woman to physically restrain her bike & gesturing helplessly to me in defeat while I asked locals where our Banyan Bar was located. Thankfully Amy watches a lot of American football at home & in her strong-willed pursuit of freedom from the bike parking nazis, she juked & weaved & freed herself from the whistler’s grasp. We were free to walk our bikes down to Banyan at the end of the beach & park ourselves in beach chairs for the rest of the day.
The beach was lovely and was somewhat crowded so we were happy to get an early start. The water was a bit more refreshing (read cold) than the beaches down south but it felt great. We enjoyed mojitos & fresh prawns on the beach. The prawns were cooked with head on in-shell & marinated in a delicious chili spice sauce. Peeling them seemed to defeat the purpose as you lose the yummy marinade so I just ate the head & all while Amy tried to dig in & messily separate the shell, eventually giving up but refusing to eat the head (delicious IMHO). We spent a lazy day here & then happily rode our bikes back to Hoi An. This beach ranks no 2 behind Doc Let but perhaps first as far as those I’d revisit & spend more time.