Off The Beaten Track

Let me set the scene for you: "Known as one of the most pristine beauties in Vietnam..." "If you have never visited Co To you might hardly imagine how charmingly beautiful and fascinating it is." These were some of the descriptions we found on the internet.

Who would not want to go there?! Well, we did. A couple of weeks ago when we were on holiday in our neighboring country we got to spend four days on this island. It was quite an experience. Unexploited and full of potential. Lonely beaches. Quiet and relaxing. Close to the local culture. I could stop here and leave you a little jealous. All of it is true. But it sure isn't the whole truth.

With unexploited and full of potential comes trashy! There are beautiful, lonely beaches on this island, but we've never seen so much trash on a beach before. No other Western tourists (and barely any Asian tourists either). Quiet and relaxing also means dead and empty. A lot of construction going on. Nothing to do. Almost all hotels were closed, barely any open restaurants. The first evening we went over to the neighbor and with sign language showed that we would want to eat. She took out her phone and wrote on Google Translate: "Do you want to eat?". Yes. Correct. Kindly she cooked fried noodles for us. The other days we walked more than 5 km (one way) to the village for finding an open restaurant. For breakfast we had cookies. With close to the local culture comes the joy of a neighbor's wedding. Weddings in this part of the world often mean loud music all day long for three days or so. A lot of alcohol and karaoke. Not exactly what you want to experience next to your hotel on a relaxing holiday. Who STARTS playing loud music at 5:40 in the morning? Seriously.

Ok. Lesson learned. Off the beaten track means off the beaten track. In spite of all information and research on the internet it didn't turn out as expected. It wasn't all bad, but it definitely wasn't what we had expected. In the end it was very relaxing, and maybe that's what we needed. Looking back this will probably be one of the holidays we won't forget with many memories to laugh about.