(PICTURE: The Nguyens at Lan Co Beach.)A couple days before we left for the wedding, Huyen mentioned to me that we could take a day trip to the "nicest beach in the world." Apparently someone wrote in a Vietnamese publication that Lan Co Beach was the best beach on Earth and well, clearly people believe it.
Huyen and I were going to take a motorbike to the beach but at the last minute, her mother, aunt, grandfather, sisters and nephew decided to join us. We called up a car and had a driver bring us about 50 kilometers to a resort on the beach.
When we got to the beach, I saw something that I will never ever forget. When the first wave came, Huyen's mother and aunt FREAKED OUT. They both sort of yelped and ran away from the water and up a few feet towards the resort. I figured they didn't know how to swim but couldn't imagine they'd be so scared of drowning my just having water rush over their feet. Well, it turns out this was their FIRST TIME SEEING THE OCEAN!
I couldn't believe it when Huyen told me this information. I guess I just take it for granted that anyone who is over ____ (pick an arbitrarily low number) has seen the beach at some point in their life. When I asked Huyen why it took her mom to the last moment to join our trip she said, "My mother said she had seen the ocean on TV and didn't need to go." After playing around on the sand for about an hour her mother, aunt and grandfather all agreed that the real thing was a lot better than the beach. If Lan Co Beach is really the best beach in the world, it's not a bad one to see for your first time.
