Day 12: Quan Lan Island

Today was a planned rest day at the island resort. Most riding days we'd been getting up at 06:30 so we could start riding early, so today's sleep-in was a definite treat. We had bread and eggs for breakfast. When I requested condensed milk for my coffee, a man was promptly dispatched off to the village on his scooter to fetch some (I tried telling them that I didn't really need any, to no avail). In fact, the night before, requests for bottled water and beer at dinner time had the same effect (with our drinks materialising from off the back of a scooter 10 or 15min later).

It was another day of foggy/misty/cloudy weather but at least is wasn't raining. We spent the morning wandering along the island roads. At one point we passed a couple of old women walking the other way. They stopped and holding their hands out to Ryan, started talking excitedly in Vietnamese. We had no idea what they wanted, and it was only when Ryan (thinking they might be begging) put his hand out to make a gesture of refusal, that they grabbed his hands and it suddenly became clear that all they were after was a handshake.

We passed through a couple of small villages and ended up on the coast at an old loading dock. Some men sitting outside a nearby house invited us to sit with them (with calls of "I love you"), but we carried on to walk around the stony beach of the adjacent headland. The sea was completely obscured by mist, but the water was crystal clear, and I could imagine (with blue skies) why it would be a popular place to stay.

We returned to the resort for lunch. Afterwards, we were relaxing in a couple of swinging chairs in the garden, when a few locals turned up, then a few more and all of a sudden (after someone was sent off to turn on the generator) we found ourselves being serenaded (?!) with very loud and extremely bad karaoke. And it only deteriorated with each subsequent scooter-load of beer.

The noise eventually subsided, making it possible to head up to our room for a rest (unfortunately situated directly above the karaoke machine). Ryan went for another walk on the beach, accompanied by one of the resort dogs that faithfully followed him all the way out to the headland and back again. Then we rounded out the afternoon by watching the local boys and young men playing soccer on the beach (cheering on our guide who had decided to join in).