Cham Island

 My next stay was Cham Island. It’s a really beautiful little fishing island. There are very few tourists, even though it’s really close to some big tourist centers. I liked it because it felt a little more authentic to Vietnam than most places I’ve been.

To get there I had to take a bus to the next city over and then take a boat to the island. The water on the day I rode over was really rough and it was not an easy ride. Still, though it was a really beautiful ride as you could see these huge fly stone mountains in the foreground that we were headed in for. The water is a refreshing light blue. 

On the boat I’m met a few other people I met a German couple who I traveled with a vet and later would find out we’re staying in my homes stay with me. I ended up spending a lot of my weekend with them. The other group I chatted with quite a bit was an American family from Seattle. The recently graduated son was traveling across Southeast Asia and his parents had come to join him for a couple weeks. They were really cute and we’re staying in the same village as me so I also saw them and the number of times throughout my trip which was really nice.

When I arrived on the island, someone was standing there with my name on a sign. They put me on the back of their motorbike, and drove me over to my hay on a smaller village on the island. There were maybe 10 houses in this village that were open for homestay and then maybe 20 other houses including a small military installment.

My host family were so nice and they didn’t speak English, but they were really good at pantomime. Upon arriving the son of the Homesafe family, who is about 23 star showed me and the German couple around the village. He took us to this Buddhist temple, which was really cool, and it had all these statues that were mosaic and made from beer, bottles and bowls, and all sorts of different glasses ceramics that had broken in and around the village. they were really beautiful and it was really cool to see them and also to see the repurposing of items in the area especially on this island. I don’t think it is super easy for them to get things there at least not as easy as it is on the mainland. while it’s not a long boat ride, I don’t think there is a lot of extra space on the boat often for bringing things over.

After tour the village, I ended up hanging out at one of the beaches which was really peaceful, and I bought some fresh made juice from one of the locals, and it was really delicious. You could see them squeezing, and like macerating the mango in the back for my mango juice. it was absolutely delicious. After the sunset I headed back to my home for dinner. They sat me with the German couple and I ate food such as grilled octopus. These Lacey, rice paper wraps that were filled with what tasted like a savory, pumpkin mix and fried. We had oranges and fried rice and another seafood.

The next morning, I made banana pancakes and Vietnamese coffee for breakfast. Vietnamese coffee is really good but I think I’ve gotten a little tired of sweetened condensed milk, especially with the banana pancake and it was just a lot of sugar first thing in the morning. I’m more of a savory breakfast person. I enjoy sweet occasionally, but it was a bit much for me that morning. Everything I ate on the island though I believe was grown there. They showed me all of their gardens and then on top of it. There’s a bunch of fruit and vegetable plants throughout the island that people pick and eat. It’s really cool that they’re able to feed themselves as well as a few pain tourist with them food that they grow on the island locally.

The rest of my morning, hanging out on the beach which was so lovely and nice. The water was just a little bit cooler than you want it to be but with the hot sun it was absolutely perfect. In the afternoon, the family son and the German couple, and I went snorkeling together. He took us out on the Vietnamese boat, which is maybe 4 feet across and a circle. It’s made of fiberglass and reinforced with a bamboo frame. He used the paddle, and I was amazed with how quick he was able to pull three people and a dog through the ocean and around boat. These boats are really common. It seems like many people use them as just a dinghy to get to bigger boats if they have them but you can also see them pretty far a couple hours away from, the docking point fishing out of these small, circular hand driven boats. 

The claim was really good. We saw lots of small fish. I suspect that fish can’t get too big in this area because it is a fishing population that gets most of their subsistence fishing and while there are technically regulations, I don’t think they well-controlled. That being said it was still really beautiful and I really enjoyed it. The water was a little foggy because we were close to the beach, but it was really nice and we were there for a few hours and going to the beach and just really enjoying it.

We returned to the village in the evening a little before sunset, and I sat on the beach to watch the sunset before going back home for dinner. For dinner, the second night the weather was better, and we were able to sit on the roof under the lights looking out on the little boats on the water below us bobbing and blinking their lights. We had a dinner of sunflower, sprout salad with a rice, wine vinegar, dressing, topped with peanuts. It was really good. As well as a grilled fish and more rice, paper wrapped dumplings, but this time they had a fish filling and fried rice again as well as oranges. Every time they give us so much food like, more than I can conceive of eating. But the German couple kept insisting that it would be rude. If we didn’t eat everything we reserved and they pressured me into eating quite a bit while they also ate all ton.

The next morning, I got up really early to see the sunrise so we met at 5 AM. The host family drove us to the top of the mountain, overlooking the ocean to see the sunrise. It was so beautiful and below you could see fisherman fishing in their boat and it was just really incredible. Unfortunately I had to rush out of there because I had to catch a 7 AM boat And the actual sunrise wasn’t until 615. So my driver pretty quick to get me back to the house to grab my bag cut through the military installment. I could tell he was getting yelled at about it, but he must’ve been telling him that we would miss the boat and so they said it was fine I guess. I was definitely surprised, but it was also interesting to drive through it. It’s just something different. I made it to my boat and unlike the boat to the island where there were no other Vietnamese people on the boat this time I was the only non-Vietnamese person. I suppose the morning ferry must be for locals in the afternoon ferry for tourist. At one point they were getting a woman with a broken leg on the boat, which looked very difficult and quite a feat, in the end, it all worked out though.