Back to the beach

Trip Start Jun 19, 2008
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Trip End Ongoing


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Where I stayed
Delight
(Mui Ne hotels)

Flag of Vietnam  ,
Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The day after the wedding we went back to HCMC and caught a bus to Mui Ne, a beach area up the coast. The bus ride was fine and took about 5.5 hours. When we arrived at our hotel, I realized my bag had some kind of oily substance all over the front. We had seen the bus driver taking out someone's motorbike from the luggage area under the bus earlier and guess that whatever the stuff was probably leaked out of the stupid motorbike. My bag was pretty gross, but luckily it only got on the inside a little bit and only on a few items of my clothing. Very annoying though. And really hard to get out. We spent our first evening walking along the beach and drinking cocktails at a beachfront bar.

The next day we tanned and lounged on the beach for a couple hours. There were loads of kite surfers around. Some of them were really good and did impressive jumps out of the water. Later that day we went on a tour, just the three of us in a jeep with a guide Mui Ne
Mui Ne
 . Our first stop was the Fairy Stream. As soon as we took off our shoes to go walk in the stream, red ants started biting mine and Joe's feet. For some reason they didn't go for Angie. I don't think I've ever been bitten by a red ant before. It hurt quite a bit, prickly too, but it didn't last long once we were in the stream. The stream had very soft sand and slow-moving water that hit my lower leg at its highest point. A little boy came down to the stream at one point and acted as a tour guide, but then once we were back to the start, asked for a large tip. He refused our "meager" offering at first, but when he realized we weren't going to give him any more, he accepted. The next stop was a stinky, bug-filled fishing village. It seemed like a great place to catch any sort of disease. We expected this much, but it was part of the tour so we hopped out of the jeep for about 5 minutes and then continued to the Red "Canyon." This was also not much to speak of, rather like a Thai waterfall. Anything to get the tourists in I suppose though we did have some excitement on our way to the next stop. Angie and I got into the jeep and just as Joe was about to get in as well, the jeep started moving backwards. It picked up a little speed before Joe and the driver managed to stop it, just as Angie and I were thinking we'd have to jump ship. Good thing we weren't on the edge of a real canyon! After the canyon we went to the sand dunes. This was by far the highlight of the trip. We climbed up several dunes, ignored the kids trying to get us to pay to sled down the dunes, and took some really cool photos. The dunes just kept going and going. It felt like we were in the desert.

We enjoyed more cocktails on the beach that night and returned to Ho Chi Minh City the following day. Mui Ne was very pretty, low-key, and relaxing. It was a nice reprieve from the busy city. 
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