Sun, sea, sand and more sand
Trip Start
Nov 26, 2007
1
20
44
Trip End
Apr 17, 2008
Mui Ne,
Vietnam
Friday, February 22, 2008
We were dropped of in the middle of "the strip" in Mui Ne where the hotels were more expensive so young Yentle set off on the back of a motorbike to find us somewhere cheaper. And a good job she did, she got us a twin room for $7 right on the beach in a quiet little place. The rest of the day we just chilled out, well I did at least, poor Yentle had her day ruined by a Vietnamese fishing family running into our hotel after a cute little puppy dog
Dog Versus Monkey.
. After they cornered it they proceeded to smack it over the head with a garden rake until it was dead. As if that wasn't enough they then tossed the limp corpse over the fence so it was lying on our beach until the tide got it the next day. We never really got much of a reason for the dog killing but I guess it must have bitten one of the children or stole their fish or something. For people who kill their food everyday killing a dog is nothing but for a vegetarian Belg girl it was all very upsetting. The hotel was totally dead in the week but at the weekend 2 bus loads of Vietnamese turned up from Saigon complete with cookers, ice etc for a party. I strolled out of the room at 8am on Saturday morning to be greeted by about 20 Vietnamese people trying to thrust beer into my hand. Needless to say I didn't feel like that cultural experience and was proven right by the fact that they were all scattered around in hammocks when we got back at 5pm.
It turns out that Mui Ne is just a big long strip so the next day we rented some bicycles. Asa result we ended up cycling 40 or 50km most days in Mui Ne. Cycling was fun except for weekend days when the place fills up with up hundreds of horn tooting buses from Saigon who think they rule the road. Its pretty much resorts (ranging from your $5/night to $200/night places), restaurants and the odd little fishing shack. As it said in the guide book, you certainly smell Mui Ne before you see it; the main industry apart from tourism here is fish sauce made by fermenting little fish. The village itself has almost no tourists in it, we went to eat at the market one evening (I had spring rolls wrapped with leaves in a massive sheet of rice paper to make an extra big spring roll) and it was like they had never seen westerners before. Also up in the town they had a bia hoi place (essentially home brewed beer) where beer was 7p a pint!! The only downside was that you had a the company of lots of rats running around under the tables etc. In fact it seemed that rates were not an uncommon sight anywhere in Mui Ne after night fall.
The beach in Mui Ne is lovely but you definitely get the feeling that in 5 years time there will be nothing but big concrete resorts here a la Thailand. The resorts have a strong emphasis on kite and wind surfing. I was tempted to try the kite surfing but at $200/day I might as well do it in Europe sometime.
What I wasn't prepared for was the amount of Russian in Mui Ne. They consisted mainly of fit young girls and big beefy men (tip of the week, don't chat to the fit young girls with wedding rings on no matter how much they smile at you as you play pool...you get some very evil looks from big unit Russian fella when he comes back to the bar..). Even the kite surf instructors were Russian chicks. It turns out that the Russians still have the concession for extracting the Vietnamese oil hence the rich beefy men (usually with one Russian bird and a Vietnamese in toe). I found this a little bit rich given that Western companies are now extracting vast tracts of Russian oil that they lacked the technology to do themselves but I guess they need something back for propping up the Vietnamese regime for 30 years.
The first day it was just me and Yentle but by day two Dave (aerospace engineer from Southampton whom it turns out is making a similar trip to me so we are going to meet up again in Chengdu to go to Nepal together), Jeroen (Dutch IT specialist who has been running his own consulting business from China for the last few years) and Bill (Californian sports merchandise seller who) had all turned up. Bill was new to the gang but was a really nice bloke, he was 58 years old but perfectly at ease running around with us lot. He spend a lot of time educating us in the US system of tipping any Vietnamese person who moved. Bills politics were very un-American except if you got him on Israel or the Rolling Stones merchandising rights whence you practically see his blood beginning to boil. It was Dave's birthday while they were there so the 8pm bed business had to stop for one night at least. The meal we had was an 'on the table' barbecue which was great fun, you just get a platter of fish and meat and you slap it on the little barbie as you need it. Afterwards we went to Wax Bar - a trendy hangout for kite surfers and Russians where me and Dave educated them in the art of comedy dancing.
The food in Mui Ne was amazing; lots of fresh fish. One night we had fresh fish and 4 or 5 beers all for less than the price of one pint in Manchester!! My new favorite food however is the rice porridge soup with fish. Its the best breakfast meal ever, a little bit like peppery (non sweet) rice pudding with fish.
Non water sport activities around Mui Ne centre around the sand dunes near the town. They have red ones, yellow ones and white ones. The five of us hired a jeep and driver for the day; it was like being in the Sahara. We it would have been was it not for the bunches of Vietnamese kids who followed us everywhere trying to be our guides or rent us sheets of plastic to slide down the sand dunes on (and then having the cheek to try and ask for another 10,000 Dong every time we used the sheet; which could not have cost more than 10,000 itself). They can actually get intensely annoying at times as they will not take no for an answer and just keep tugging your arm. I even tried to pretend I spoke no English but that had no effect whosoever.
And that really was Mui Ne. It would have been easy to stay there for ages living on the beach for $10/day but having already lived on the beach for $30/day in Porn I decided not to get bogged down like that again.
Mui Ne pictures.
