The beach near Tĩnh Gia is long, flat, sandy, lined with tropical vegetation, and provides a living for humans and animals alike While Tĩnh Gia Town may not have much going for it, the sea does its best to compensate. Some three kilometres away lies the coast with its sand beach and the resulting activities that beaches and sea attract.
The Beach
Digging for molluscs or lugworms in the intertidal zone
At first glance the sands seem empty, a closer look shows the richness of life they support.
Beach diggers who cycle to work. The roughness of the sand's surface is formed by the material brought up from their burrows of the millions of small crabs that live here. Below a picture of these materials which the crabs form into small pellets
Indeed so rich are such sands that, per cubic metre, the biomass in intertidal zones is greater than that found in the Amazonian jungle. While humans and birds know to dig for hidden food, areas of the beach provide evidence on the surface of this richness. Here an example is offered by the casts of crabs brought to the surface by the millions of these busy house cleaners.
Turritella bacillum - Tower Shells, on Tĩnh Gia Beach. Larger ones, like the two here, are about 10 cms (4 inches) long
More evidence of this richness comes in the shape of Tower Shells left behind by their inhabitants as they move on to a larger property.
The water is near to 30 degrees most of the year, but the heavy and nearly constant swell combined with the sand and mud stirred up by it, makes the sea unattractive for swimming.
Fifteen kilometres away and rarely visible in the thick atmosphere of northern Vietnam is the island called Hòn Mê - just seen here on the horizon - this is the preserve of the military and likely to remain so with current Chinese expansionism.
The swell in the China Sea may be a couple of metres, but the ripples in the sand it leaves are delicate in the extreme.
Like any coastal area, for most of the time, the beach at Tĩnh Gia is left to the reflective walker and the occasional dog The next page has more on tourism at Tĩnh Gia Beach.
The last page followed the road down to this beach
Beached Boats in Tĩnh Gia
Go to a very different coast line in the North Atlantic
