After 2 days at the children's hospital, I was off to DaNang with the two other vets that were with me, and my WHITES PLR-1. I picked this machine because it would do the job I was looking for, and would introduce a new hobby to the people that they could afford.
With China Beach as our first stop, I assemble the detector, and handed it to my Vietnamese guide, Tre, so that he could be the first person to metal detect in his country. It took only seconds before the BEEP came out of this yellow box with the handle on it. I showed Tre how to use the sand scoop, and soon he found his first treasure. It was a Tiger Beer bottle cap, lost only a few days earlier. This beach sees about 3,000 to 4,000 people a day, and common practice with beer caps is to spin them into the sand.
I let Tre work with the detector for about 1/2 hour, before handing it over to the second person to ever metal detect China Beach. Carey was first in Vietnam in 1967, as a medic. Now he was on his first return trip to Vietnam, this time with a White's Metal Detector in hand, looking for the treasure that Tre could not find.
Carey walked up and down the white sandy beach, but like Tre, only came up with beer caps, some wire, and a few lead fishing weights. With a crowd of around 20 people assisting us, next up was Gerry, and this was his 4th trip back to Vietnam since the war.
After an hour of walking the beach, in 110-degree temperature, Gerry had no better luck than those that had gone before him. Beer Time sounded like a good idea, so we found a shady hut and ordered up a few cold Tiger beer's.
Word was out that some Americans had a machine that would find treasures, and the crowed grew larger. I finished my beer, picked up my detector, and headed back to the sand with my new found friends. Everyone had a chance to find their pot of gold, but all came up with the same trash.
Now it was time to add some fun to this treasure hunt, so with a quick flick, I pitched a new 2000 US $1 coin into the sand to my right. I pointed to the young Vietnamese man that was holding the detector, and pointed to the area I had salted, and suggested that it might be a good place to look.
BEEP! BEEEP! BEEEEP! "This could be it!" I said, and he started with the sand scoop to retrieve his treasure. Well, look at that! A real treasure! This kid had to jump 3 feet in the air. Now the trouble was that everyone wanted to find a new US $1 coin . Over the next 2 hours, I was able to help them find another 20 new US $1 coins. Boy, they were lucky!
We came back the next day, and had just as much fun, and continued to salt the beach with the coins I brought along on the trip. We had to find some treasure. I could have sold the detector 20 times over, but I still had another beach to cover, and that was another 300 miles south.
Plans were to head to Nha Trang for our second week in country, so we jumped a flight, and headed south. This beach is long, white sand, and gets about 2,000 people a day for fun and sun. We picked 7am for a start time, no crowed, and started our second treasure hunt.
My friend Tung , who lives in Nha Trang, was given the opportunity to be the first person to metal detect Nha Trang beach. It took him a few minutes to get the idea of what it was all about, but then he was off to find his treasure. This beach also had its fill of beer caps and wire, and not much luck with treasure. One local came up to us to show the spot that a tourist had lost a diamond ring just a few days earlier. This sounded good, so off we went down the beach. With about 1 hour into the hunt, and no luck, we moved back up the beach to get away from the crowed that now had to be 100 people. Every step and you tripped over someone. We made our move, but so did the crowed, ready to jump on anything that even looked of value.
I salted the area with a few more US $1 coins, and let some of the locals try their luck. Within seconds they had their new US coin. This beach cost me 25 coins, $1 ones at that, but all in the name of fun.
We had fun, found lots of junk, made many new friends, and the best part was introducing this new hobbie ----METAL DETECTING ---- to the people of Vietnam. Last day, time for one more walk along the beach . This time we used Tung's new machine, [the yellow PRL-1] that I gave him as a parting gift, and only found another pocket full of beer cap's.
It's now up to Tung to continue the search for treasure along the beach at Nha Trang. I wished him luck, and hope his new White's PRL-1 finds him "the Gold."