BETWEEN HEAVEN, HELL AND CHINA BEACH

While in the lovely town of Hoi An, Vietnam we ran in to an Australian who was raving about the great body surfing at Cau Dai, a beach about 3 miles away from where we were staying. I never miss an opportunity to body surf andDeb loves the beach as much as the mountains. So we decided to go to the beach. We considered biking to the beach but had also read in our guidebook that a little further up the coast was the famous China Beach. Since Deb had worked on the TV series of the same name we just had to go there as well. So we rented a moto and, undaunted by our previous experience, set out for the two beaches. What could be better than riding up the coast on a motorcycle on a sunny day?

Ready to ride

This time we had the right machine for the conditions-a street bike on pavement. We took off. Dodging and weaving through the morning town traffic we reached our first stop at Cau Dai beach after about a ten minute ride. It was a very nice coconut palm lined beach. There were beach side restaurants that offered food, drink and lounges under palapas for rent. Although this was a tempting scene we decided to move to China Beach after a few minutes of wiggling our toes in the sand.

A few miles along the way to China Beach we noticed a side road going down to another beach. We took a small detour. We turned off the main road to find a perfect little beach with a few beach side restaurants. The three foot surf was breaking just far enough off the beach to offer the potential for some really nice body surfing. However, we were still determined to go to China Beach so we kept going with the intent to return there for our beach day.

We zoomed about ten miles further up the coast road until we spotted the sign for China Beach. At the same time we saw a sizable tiered pagoda on the opposite side of the road. Our curiosity aroused ,we decided to see how close we could get to the pagoda. We followed a road which appeared to go right up to the base of the pagoda.
We were passing several shops that were sculpting marble into everything imaginable from Buddhas to lions to some rather well endowed female nudes. We put two and two together and realized this must be the Marble Mountain that Ian had seen on his trip from Da Nang. We pulled into a parking lot and noticed the entrance to a large cave. However, it now being the noon hour my stomach was clamoring for food. Being the creature of habit that I am, we decided to go for some lunch. We thought it would be much nicer to have lunch on the beach so we motoed on over to China Beach a few hundred yards away.

After a few false starts, we settled on a crowded restaurant following our unwritten rule that popular places were usually better and the food likely fresher. We were not disappointed. We were treated to a very good fish steak cooked in a tangy tomato sauce along with a nice bowl of shrimp soup.

Deb at China Beach in stylish head gear

After lunch we decided to go a little further up the coast because we had read about a nicer resort on China Beach. We got all the way to Da Nang without finding anything with the name China Beach on it so we decided to visit the cave we had seen earlier back down the road.

We arrived at the cave not sure what it was about and bought a ticket to go in. We started to really wonder what the cave was all about as there were ominous sculptures at the entrance. We crossed a bridge that had vicious looking serpents carved into the handrail. The small pond we crossed over had disembodied hands reaching out of it as if asking for help to be pulled out of the ground in the floor of the pond.

Richard tempts fate

Hand shake with hell

We entered into a huge dimly lit cavern at least ten stories high. We could hear the twittering of thousands of bats somewhere above. Water was dripping from the ceiling and walls of the chamber and it was so humid it felt like we were breathing water. We noticed bizarre bas reliefs of ancient men carved into the marbleized limestone on the walls of the chamber.

The guardian of the cavern

We went deeper into the cavern wondering, “What the hell?” We entered into another chamber to find altars with statues of Kwan Yin and Buddha.

We noticed a stairway descending into the depths of the cavern. Again, the phrase, “What the hell?’ went through our minds which turned out to be very portentous.

Kinda creepy

We started to notice many statues with worried looks. Then we started to notice even more bizarre figures. First there was a man half swallowed by a snake. Then a woman being flogged. Then we saw another woman being sawed in half.

What the hell are these guys doing?

We rounded another corner and there he was-the devil himself! Yes, dear readers we had descended into the very depths of hell!!!! Or, had we?

Did Debbie and Richard find hell on earth? Did they escape the clutches of the devil? Stay tuned and hope there is a next installment of Journey to the East.