Mui Ne,
Vietnam
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Having left Saigon behind we were hoping for some good beach action as we loved the city and didn't really want to leave. We arrived in Mui Ne, a strip of sand 10km long with one road. On one side beachside resorts and guest houses and on the other seafood restaurants galore. We picked a place out of the book once again as is our way now but when we arrived we decided just to follow the moto drivers advice insdead. We ended up in a beautful resort ($20) with bamboo bunglows and a swimming pool which was right on the beach. The next few hours were spent in the pool (the first pool we've been in since coming away) and on the beach watching the Kite surfers. This is Vietnams premier spot for wind surfing/kite surfing etc. Bumped into a guy who we met in Siem Reap too, who was just starting his first kite surfing lesson. After lazing about we decided to do something with the evening as we really had only 24h in Mui Ne before moving on to Nha Trang. We hired a moped again and set off for the famous sand dunes. We pulled up at the nearest set of dunes with the intention of having a quiet sunset with the dunes as the back drop. As soon as we pull up about 50 kids all trying to sell us time on their homemade plastic sledges for sand sliding show up. And they are persistant. We make it halfway up the dunes fending them off before they start sitting on our bike at the bottom of the hill, claiming that they will look after it for a price. It looked like that peaceful sunset was a no go and i swatted away the kids and put the bike outside a restaurant to be safe. The kids were persistant and eventually after some hard bargaining i got the sledge and went dune sliding. Sounds awesome but unless you dig up the wetish sand below the surface and spread it evenly on the surface yours sliding down and on the sledge itself then you grind to a stop almost straight away. Some of the bigger dunes were fun but its very tiring and gets old pretty quick. Funnier was to watch a bunch of americans trying to get some speed up down the dunes without being buried.
Sunset happened whilst driving back as we were hungry and i was gonna try some of the freshest seafood in Vietnam. That and we both decided that we hadn't drunk nearly enough wine over the last few weeks and were going to find a restaurant with a wine list. We didn't have to go far from the hotel to find a beautiful restaurant with live seafood and an open BBQ at the front. Lobster is still damn expensive even here so i had a tiger prawn after our main meals. Didn't need more than one though cause it was huge! Easily 25-30cm nose to tail and delicious - kim very jealous but probably a good idea she didn't have any as it wouldn't almost certainly have put her in hospital. One bottle of expensive french wine down and we headed to a local shop to find another and thought we would try some local wine instead - in short - don't bother. The finest wine from the hills of Dalat is awful although kim had a crack at drinking quite a bit when we got back while watching the Zen, i had already passed out very contented.
The following day was mostly lazing by the pool and on the beach and getting tickets to Nha Trang. We had intended on seeing as much as possible of southern Vietnam and then flying to Hanoi as this way we could make the most of the short Visa. Hopping between cities with 4-6h bus hourneys each day though is tiring, so as you will see this was the only two days we did consecutive bus journeys, being lazy on a beach is much more our style...
