Merry Christmas! To all of you snowbound in Europe, I’m sure Rachel and I probably did spare you a thought at some point while we were lying on the beach in Vung Tau yesterday – I just can’t remember exactly when!

Vung Tau is a small seaside town about an hour and a half by hydrofoil from HCMC. We had heard mixed reports about it. Being something of an oil town, with oil rigs and tankers dotting the horizon, the cleanliness of the sea and the beaches can be less than ideal, but for a quick day trip out of Ho Chi Minh and a breath of fresh, sea air it’s the first place most Saigonites turn to. So we set out prepared potentially to stay over night, and, as ever when Rachel’s around, for adventure.

…Ever since she got here she’s had her nose in Lonely Planet looking for day trips, and trying to persuade me that tobogganing down a mountain is a good idea!…She has at least agreed to go geo-caching when I’m at work…

This is actually my first real time off since arriving in Vietnam – without consecutive days off you are a little restricted to what you can do – Thursday is my regular day off, and the school closes for Christmas at 5pm today (Christmas Eve) until Sunday morning, and as my lessons on Fridays don’t usually start until 5.15pm…

The day actually started at a Post Office just around the corner from school where I had been instructed to present myself, my passport and 7000 dong (20p?) in order to collect a parcel from home (my beloved moleskine notebooks – don’t feel like a proper teacher without them). All quite straightforward, although the chap did produce a wad of collection notes addressed to other teachers at school, in the hope that I’d cough up and deliver them for him. Err, no. I want promotion not slavery.

Then off to Backpackerville for breakfast at Bobby Brewers, before walking round to the port and catching the 12pm ferry by the skin of our teeth. Rachel had already warned me she gets seasick on stationary boats, so the immediate movement was welcome, as were the complimentary bottles of water the steward handed out. Rather more worrying were the sick bags they also hand out.

She says it's not her best side!

So we arrived in Vung Tau about 1.30pm to be greeted by the SE Asian tourist-spot barrage of taxi touts. Eventually we made our way round to Back Beach which is supposedly the cleaner of the town’s beaches. Not the best beach in the world and definitely pretty dirty, especially at the southern end, but not the worst either of us have ever been on. It was also pretty quiet, all the bars and cafes along the beach seemed more or less deserted save for a few staff doing out-of-season repairs. There were, in fact, a handful of other Westerners scattered around, but mainly we shared the long sandy beach with Vietnamese families (who all seemed to go into the water fully clothed) and some very busy little translucent white crab things scuttling about – I think one of them tried to pinch me on the elbow.

What we didn’t really reckon on as we sat down on Rachel’s sarong was that the tide was actually coming in, and coming in quite quickly. Even sitting there watching the waves gradually work their way closer, as I waited for my already wet shorts to dry, it didn't really register. Then it happened. Just as my shorts were more or less dry, a particularly clever wave got me up to the shins, soaked Lonely Planet which was lying between us, and completely missed Rachel. She laughed, we took stock of damage and sat back down. And it happened again. Bigger and better this time. The second wave caught Rachel too, but clearly still had it in for me especially, depositing a dead fish between my knees.

This kind of thing only ever happens when I’m with Rachel. All those months in Bournemouth, the sea stayed respectfully at the bottom of the beach where it belongs. Nowhere near me unless I specifically go to it. But with Rachel, it attacks me.

We beat a hasty and very damp, sandy retreat back to the port area, to investigate whether or not there was anything there worth keeping us in town overnight. There wasn’t. It reminds me a little of some of the places I worked in in Japan. Not far from the metropolis, but not much going on in the place itself. Probably heaving at weekends, but dead midweek. Quite glad I didn’t get a job at the school there. So we purchased our tickets for the last ferry of the day back to Ho Chi Minh and had a quick drink while we waited.

And waited. The 16.45 hydrofoil finally turned up about half an hour late. We boarded. The rather stressed looking steward handed out more sick bags. The boat pulled away from the dock and chugged out into open water. And chugged. Slowly. For about 15 minutes. The steward continued to look harrassed. Then a friendly fellow passenger leaned across his girlfriend and explained the situation to us. There was something wrong with the engine. The company were sending a back up boat which they would transfer us to (mid-ocean!!!) to continue the journey back to HCMC. And the steward continued to hand out sick bags.

The whole transfer was, in fact, very well organised and could have been much worse. The rescue boat was with us much sooner than the 15 minutes our new friend had estimated, and crossing from one boat to another was quite straightforward, as long as you waited for the people who were already making use of the sick bags (not Rachel thankfully) to get out of the way first. The rest of the journey was quite painless, apart from the occasional whiff from the sick bags, and we were back in the city just after seven. In fact, it seemed faster than the outward journey, although Rachel was bemused by something she hadn’t noticed on the way out. Every so often the boat randomly stops, reverses a bit, then starts up again and continues on its way.

We had discussed the possibility of getting dinner in Backpackerville before heading home, but by the time we got back to the city all either of us could think of was showering off the coating of sand left by the sea attacks. So a rather nervous and concerned taxi driver dropped us off in front of the apartment building (I think he thought these two Westerners with backpacks had got the address wrong and wouldn’t want to be left in such a Vietnamese area). We showered, changed and Rachel was very brave and phoned the English language sushi delivery hotline, and with a minor wobble when the girl at the other end thought we wanted our dinner delivered to the Pham Viet Chanh in District 1, within half an hour we were tucking in, and feeling very pleased with ourselves!

Then we settled sleepily on the sofa with a couple of bottles of wine, some Baileys, cake and ice cream and a dvd.

So Christmas begins with sunburn on one foot and a cut from a shattered wine bottle on the other (I knocked it over, Rachel swept it up, perfect team work!)