Mui Ne

Mui Ne was a small two day affair. It's a coastal town, and my first bit of beach in Vietnam. Unfortunately, it could have been better. The beach wasn't entirely clean (dog skeleton sticking out of the sand), and there wasn't much going on. Jon and I later found out that we had stayed on the 'bad end' of the beach. Apparently a few miles away, the beach was absolutely stunning. Whoops!

That said, I did enjoy my time in Mui Ne. The first day I lazed about (it's what I do best), before wandering down the main strip of town to find food. We found a restaurant, but procuring the food was rather difficult. They didn't have 4 of the 5 things I wanted to order. I just had a beer instead, so it was all good. (I later discovered that 'bread' was inexistent in this town. Though it was on the menu, nobody actually had any 'in stock'.)

I spent the following day on the beach, reading a book. I would say I was "sunning" but I was drenched in the shadow of an umbrella and wrapped in a sarong. Somehow, I managed to get a little burned. (I suppose it was during my brief foray into the water. The waves were pretty rough and the undertow was a bit strong, so I didn't stay in the water too long.) Jon and I decided to explore the opposite end of the strip and walked a long way, but not quite into town. I got some really good food (yay)! We had booked a tour the following morning, and by morning, I mean 5:30 a.m. Needless to say, it was an early night.

I was surprisingly awake the morning of our tour. The first stop was a trip to see the sunrise over the yellow sand dunes. There were quite a lot of people up at that hour, which seemed very unnatural and a perhaps a bit scary. Most of them were tourists who were trying to 'sled' down the dunes; it didn't appear to work very well. I took photos for a bit, but then played in the sand instead. It was lots of fun. After a half hour, I was finished playing with the sand, and we moved on to the red cliffs, then a fishing market/village. At the fishing village, a brisk business was taking place in the early hours as the fishermen were unloading their catch. From the fishing boats, the fish would be loaded into smaller floating circular pod-boats and taken into shore, where they would be sold by the fishermen's wives in the market. It was pretty chaotic, and fairly smelly, but a really cool experience.

We then stopped at the "Fairy Spring", which was a two kilometer walk in a cold shallow stream. The rock formations surrounding the stream were really interesting, so it made for a very enjoyable walk. For me, this was the highlight of my stay in Mui Ne.

On the whole, I really enjoyed the tour, but I was a bit sleepy by the time it ended. Fortunately, I had enough time to take a nap before packing up to leave. Next stop: Dalat.