Another day, another Dong

Dong is the Vietnamese currency, where 20 thousand dong = 1 dollar. Beer at the place we are staying at right now is 8000 dong, which is 40 cents. So far, the cheapest cold beer in my quest for the cheapest cold beer on the planet. And these are 450 ml!

So another few days since the last post, and another few beaches. Since Ke Ga we cycled up the coast to Mui Ne, which is a fairly big resort area. It was weird to see all the big glistening white tourists (lots of Russians...seems to be the target rich people around here) walking around with their tourist getups. On the bikes, we seem to stay away from that scene most of time. Although, it's nice to be in an area with good restaurants and things like that. We found a guy selling pirated (photocopied) books for about 2 bucks a book. Can't beat that. Amy's now happily reading away on the beach. I picked up a few Vietnam war books which are awesome reading while surrounded by the context. What a crazy war! Hard to believe that happened. It's pretty cool though, that there is absolutely no sign of the war. If we weren't reading about it, we wouldn't know it even happened. Vietnam seems to have fully recovered and is full steam ahead. In fact, Vietnam is one of the world's fastest emerging economies at the moment.

The cycling is going smoothly. The kids treat us like rock stars as we ride through towns. Yesterday was our longest ride yet of 126 km. We wanted to get to a beach, as opposed to staying in the middle of nowhere. We're taking the day off today and enjoying our waterfront bungalow, and of course the 40-cent beers. As an added bonus, there's some snorkeling action here, which has been fun. Tomorrow (or the next day) we head for Nha Trang....beach capital of Vietnam.