My Khe Beach

Much left to be desired ...
By Archmichael (dabbler - 1 review)
Written on 17th May, 2009 after a visit to My Khe Beach in March, 2009
"A perfectly lovely little beach"? I think not. We were there for three nights, 29-31 March '09, and stayed at the so-called My Khe Beach Resort (reviewed in Travelfish). Difficult to find ... mainly due to the lack of signage. Nonetheless, the rooms were fine ... US$25 per night. Decently clean. If you needed anything, the staff had to be tracked down. The up-side, of course, being that you were let alone.

The area along the beach has the air of a development that was begun and then halted. Next to and behind our hotel, were similar buildings, abandoned part way through the construction process. And abandoned for a couple of years or so, from the look of things.

No WiFi or internet in the hotel, but I found an internet storefront a few hundred meters away, on the inland road that parallels the beach. I stepped into a room full of 13-16 year old Vietnamese boys, all focused on computer monitors. The room stopped when I walked in. The person running the establishment was a cigarette-smoking 13 year old (or so he looked). The whole thing was amusing, but got online and had a great connection.

My Khe Beach is across the road from the My Khe Beach Resort, through the Causurina trees that line the sand. Beautiful, really. Until you get to the beach. Very sadly, it's filled with trash. Broken light bulbs ... incandescent and fluorescent ... washed up and broken on the beach. All manner of other trash and flotam all over. Some stretches are comparitively clean, however, especially if you walk south from the hotel area. There's a fishing village two or three km south of the hotel, behind the trees. Interesting, round fishing boats.

We didn't have a problem with kids or others trying to sell us things on the beach or elsewhere in My Khe. Rather, we were something of a curiousity (relatively few Western tourists come there, I think).

North of the hotel a couple of hundred metres are a line of restaurants, numbered from north to south. "The restaurant owners can be pretty aggressive about trying to get you to choose their place..." Yes ... without a doubt. Off-putting, and we ended up eating several times at a restaurant a bit further up the shore: called Pho Bien.

Pho Bien was good. A guy there spoke a wee bit of English. The menu was 100% in Vietnamese, but he explained well. Anyway, the beer was cold, and that always helps. One night we had steamed clams, caught that morning off the beach where we ate. Excellent -- lemongrass, ginger, clams. Probably the best part of our experience at My Khe.

The Pho Bien has a couple of rooms, one of which I looked at. Very clean, brand new.And they were only asking US$10 a night. We were already settled into the other place and didn't feel like moving, but Pho Bien's rooms had a nice quality to them.

The weather was great, except for a torrential downpour on the last night. The biggest disppointment was the state of the beach ... just an absolute mess!

It's close to Son My (My Lai), which absolutely should be seen. Also, closer to Highway QL-1, on a mountain, is the Tien An pagoda and temple. Marvelous. Very well known within Vietnam. Ask someone to show you the road up the mountain to it, as it's not well marked. On a good day, great views from the mountiantop, also. Worth seeing.