Ditch the hotel breakfast. Instead take an early morning amble down to An Bang's local market, grab a pho from the surrounding food stalls and enter the ‘food jungle’ filled with fancy fruits, vegetables, flowers, roots and herbs unique to the region’s climate and biodiversity. For the barbecue, there's line-caught snapper, mahi mahi and grouper along with staples like fresh noodles and rice.

If banh mi doesn't cut it, hoof it to 7 Sons Bakery on the intersection. Among the many carby offerings, we love the freshly baked bread, butter croissants and prolific pâtissiere spread (cheesecakes, crumbles, chocolate brownies, and a large range of tarts). The air-conditioned dining area offers respite from the heat, here, you can indulge in a fully loaded breakfast - bagels, sandwiches, homemade yoghurt and fruits.
NB. They also make birthday and special occasion cakes to order. 7am-10pm

Under the shade by the main traffic lights a banquet parade of seafood awaits - lobster and blue crab fresh from the nets, oysters and fat juicy scallops. It’s a shellfish paradise for any

Throughout the summer as the sun slips from the sky, crowds descend upon An Bang beach to escape the heat of the old town. The sand becomes a patchwork quilt of colourful picnic mats and the shallows a soup of froliking familys. In the parking lot, the air is filled with the scent of sticky street meat and fried coconut fritters as a small collection of ad hoc kitchens fire up behind dinky stands. Unlike the old town, few tourists get involved, the food is as it should be, fresh, honest, cheap.

In my best case scenario, I want to be somewhere simple. With casaurina trees, cocktails and the sounds of Vietnamese techno music somewhere in the far distance. The perfect perch to survey a gin clear sea, where the loudest scensory noise comes from the smell of suntan oil on warm, brown skin. For this I go to Mahn's, a castaway shack made from bamboo and patchwork tarpaulin tucked away from the visiting hordes and maniac beach hawkers where jugs of cheap Sangria and passionfruit mojitos flow.