A beautiful day in early March 2021, as my work finished early about 3pm, I decided to ride my motorbike to Son Tra peninsula and then would go for a walk, explore the forest trails to breathe some fresh air. At that time, I planned to skip the familiar and crowded paths because I knew that if I followed those paths, I would hardly have a chance to see monkeys and langurs, who are very shy. When I arrived at the pre-determined location, I left my motorbike in a discreet bush and put on my small backpack with snacks, water, and a flashlight inside. I started by just walking around, while searching for the fisherman's trail to find my way down to the beach.
After walking about 400m further, I discovered a small hidden path, I had to look closely to see it, I guess this path is known by very few people, so I was curious and decided to take it immediately. This road seems very steep and small, there are many bushes growing around and there is no clear path (about 1/4 of the way is rocky road so it is easy to lose the track). The road down to the beach is quite far, but in return, in the forest there are many strange and beautiful trees and flowers, and also many animals (I guess so because of the sounds coming from around).
After 20 minutes of physical exertion, I reached the beach. The scenery of the wild rocky beach greeted me with the cool breeze that compensated for the sweat like bathing from climbing down here. I spent a few minutes sitting on a high rock watching and breathing the salty air and then followed the rocky beach for a walk along the beach.
This beach is full of round rocks, near the water's edge, the rocks are very slippery. I encountered a small sandy beach with some beautiful mossy rocks at the end of the season. There was one thing that made me a bit sad when I saw around a lot of plastic bottles and Styrofoam drifting to the shore and getting stuck in the rocks, even though this is a deserted beach, few people come here but this much garbage made me think about how much do human impact on the ocean.
After walking around for a while to the sights of Mui Nghe, I returned to the old rock next to the path to sit down and watch the sunset. Sitting at a beach with both rocks and sand, in front is the immense sea, further on the horizon is Cu Lao Cham Island, behind is a well-preserved green jungle, listening to the sound of the waves and birds made me feel like all my stress and fatigue were disappeared.
Being so immersed in nature, I didn’t notice until it was getting dark that I should get up to go back. When I got up, I accidentally made my only water bottle fall under the rock and couldn't get it up. I knew that going back to the parking lot would be extremely thirsty because it would take more effort to climb up, but I thought I would try to breathe slowly and breathe through my nose to avoid drying out my throat too much.
Subjectivity often brings more harm than good, I didn't expect it to get dark so quickly and with all the overgrown trees covering the light in a pitch black color, it was very hard to determine the path. I suddenly thought that maybe the cases of foreign tourists getting lost in this area were probably also because it was dark and difficult to determine the way. After going 1/4 of the way, I had to use a flashlight, and the further I went, the more confused I was when I saw that the scenery was different when going down and going up. Using a flashlight, I could only see about 2-3m ahead, so it was very difficult to distinguish the path.
And I was lost!
To be continued
