Don't Forget Your Sunscreen

Since we decided to head back to Vietnam and spend a few extra days (I mean weeks) at the beach, it was also imperative to invest in some new sunscreen. I tend to go through bottles of sunscreen lotion at an intense rate but the fanny pack tramp and I decided to buy two and share. Neither one of us wanted to chance getting a burn and peeling as we both intend to look fabulous upon arriving home in the United States of America (next week can you believe it?).

Anywho, we set off to the beach in Hoi An and tried to find some sunscreen on the way. Everywhere we stopped had teeny tiny bottles of lotion for intense prices so we decided to bicycle the entire way to the beach and then buy some. Once we found a man selling an assortment of sunscreen, it was my turn to bargain him down. Note: I will miss bargaining terribly.

The man originally wanted 300,000 dong for one bottle ($15) but since we wanted two I tried extra hard and finally got him to give us two bottles for 350,000 dong ($17). This seemed a little expensive but we wanted to be on the safe side. I also figured it was good enough bargaining that I could be proud.

Sadly, it was a bittersweet moment because upon arriving at the beach and opening container #1, we realized it was filled with random orange specks that I enjoy calling "tiddlebits."

Tiddlebits have a loose definition as I am not sure what the tiddlebits were actually made of but a few different hypotheses include some type of bronzer or just old expired lotion. They are basically large orange, concealer-like clumps. We attempted to spread the tiddlebits across our limbs but had trouble rubbing it in.

Double the sadness, we returned home that afternoon a bit burned. I immediately wanted to blame the tiddlebits but then we realized part of the burn marks were from our shirts. Apparently the sun had been so strong, we managed to get a wee bit too much color on the bike ride there.

So onto the next day and heading back to the beach. We decided to forgo using the tiddlebit sunscreen and moved onto the second bottle. This one was Nivea and 30 SPF. Triple the sadness, it had been packaged up into plastic wrap so we did not realize upon purchasing that it had been used before and most likely filled with random sunscreen after used up and then sold again. Are you confused? I tend to get confused when swindled with this method as well...

We could also tell the Nivea was not so much Nivea due to the smell. Previous Nivea bottles had nice smelling lotion, but this one was almost as difficult to apply as the tiddlebit sunscreen and it had no smell. So I decided to go back to tiddlebit sunscreen and Jordan used the Nivea.

Luckily, we did not burn at all on the second and third day so although we were sold shoddy sunscreen, it was in fact sunscreen. The only real downfall is the fact that the hard, orange, tiddlebits tend to get clogged coming out of the bottle.

So, here we are at a new destination (and our last beach) -- Mui Ne. We had skipped it on the first go of Vietnam and figured couldn't skip it again. What are we doing here besides working on our tan? Well it would have to be the second most obvious answer -- motorbike tour tomorrow!! Mui Ne has infamous sand dunes and tomorrow I intend on applying some more tiddlebit sunscreen and sledding down one.

Until next time -- hasta la vista.