Day Fourteen - 04/12/25
Oh my goodness, two weeks already. The days are absolutely flying. The last few have been so chilled and slow that they’ve all blended together into this relaxing blur of work, school, pool, beach, repeat. It’s almost hard to remember what happened on which day, but what I do know is this, I’m so bloody glad we made the decision to do this. I love it. I’m thankful for it. And I can’t wait for what’s ahead.
The morning kicked off with the daily Rosie hunt. She was still out on the patio but had climbed her way up onto the little outdoor kitchen area, hanging off the drying rack with a balloon full of yesterday’s salad dressing dangling in her hand. The note beside her said look out below. Lucky she didn’t drop it, we would’ve had chilli soy sauce splattered everywhere. The kids thought it was brilliant.
We smashed out our now-regular family exercises, then headed down for another buffet breakfast. Absolutely delicious as always. The hardest part is trying not to overdo the food, but without fail, I overdo the coffee. There’s something about Vietnamese coffee… it gives you energy, but it doesn’t give you that 3pm crash like at home. You feel good all day, and somehow still fall asleep easily at night. I’ve been having just a dash of condensed milk in mine to soften the bitterness and it’s unreal.
I ran into an English lady who had taken one of the massive beer mugs from the bar and filled that with coffee instead of using the tiny breakfast cups. Genius. I need to start doing that.
After breakfast I got a solid couple of hours of work done. The kids did their schoolwork, and we’re finally settling into a bit of a rhythm, though it’s hard, because both Maddison and Emmett want full attention all the time and are never doing the same activity. Kia’s trying to support both while also giving them independence. Meanwhile, she’d prefer I work in the afternoons, but with the timezone difference that doesn’t really work as everyone back home has clocked off by then. So I’m stuck with mornings for now. Maybe I’ll start getting up earlier. We’ll figure it out.
When I wrapped up work, I finally talked Kia into getting scooters again… one each so we could go for a proper ride. Arne at reception told us about a street a little further up the road with more local food spots, and that’s exactly what we’ve been craving. We rode up there and found a lady cooking fresh bánh mì on the spot, meat sizzling away while we waited. Absolutely delicious. Still pricier than food in town, but definitely better than the resort-area restaurants.
We grabbed a few snacks from a little corner shop where the lady handed us free watermelon for the kids. The kids got ice creams, I grabbed chips, and we just chilled for a bit.
We planned to scooter through to Ông Lang Beach via a back street, but the construction looked sketchy, so we went the usual way, walking across the rocks to get to the sand. We set ourselves up on some deck chairs… until we got moved along because apparently they belonged to the fancy resort. All good.
We chatted with a French guy who was super friendly, good to talk to someone new for a bit. Then the four of us spent ages in the water. It was like glass. We were tossing each other around, doing piggybacks, swim races, just pure fun. After that, Kia and I sat on the sand watching the kids build sandcastles for ages, which was honestly one of my favourite parts of the day.
As the sun dropped we headed back for showers, then decided to ride into town for dinner. We found this little spot with amazing food. Tasty, cheap, simple, everything you want after a beach afternoon.
I tried to get cash out for our next resort stay (we need 40 million VND for the world schooling hub starting Sunday), but the ATM would only let me withdraw 3 million at a time. And each transaction hits the Wise card for about $1.50. So I did seven transactions, sweating in the tiny hot ATM box, and filled my entire wallet with cash before giving up and deciding we’ll come back for the rest.
Then we rode through the busy streets of Dương Đông at night. Kia absolutely nailed it even though it was chaos. We stuck to one side of the street so we didn’t have to make crazy turns and it worked perfectly. The ride in and out using the old airstrip still blows my mind. How often do you get to ride a scooter up and down a runway?
We did see a scooter accident though, a guy who’d clearly had too much to drink, ran a red light and got t-boned. He was getting up when we passed. Pretty hectic. I think it rattled Kia a bit, but we’re cautious riders, so we just stayed alert.
After dinner and the ride home, that wrapped up Day 14. Two weeks in. Loving it more every day. Let’s keep the good times rolling.