Harrow Mui Ne

30th May - 2nd June - Mui Ne, Vietnam

Well at the end of the last post I mentioned what a wonderful vibrant place Nha Trang is...and we, shall we say "fully explored" its vibrancy! We met so many old friends and made so many new ones in Nha Trang that we spent a lot of time socialising together. Unfortunately, one of theese more social nights happened to fall the night before we had to be up at 6.30am to get a bus to our next destination, Mui Ne at 7am. The night before our journey Dai, Zara and I went to the local haunt, to see some of our friends for the last time. At about 10pm, Dai who isn't really a big drinker, went to me and Zara that he was going to head home - we had just bought a round in so we said, no bother, 11pm at the latest we'd head back. Yeah, famous last words... what do ya know, more people arrive, the 2 for 1 drinks keep going, next thing you know where sitting around at 5am with some guy talking about bloody aliens existing, when me and Zara looked at each other and decided "yep, this is our call to go home!!" So with just over an hour before we had to get up for our bus, we got home! Oh lordy, to say that bus journey to Mui Ne was painful...would not be an understatement! I think Dai was ready to disown us as well when he saw the shape of us getting onto the bus! Ha ha ha!

Anyhwoo, we arrived into Mui Ne, shortly after lunch. Mui Ne, is another coastal town near the south of Vietnam. That was the real advantage of travelling the coast of Vietnam - no matter where we stopped, we were usually beside the beach. A total blessing with the hot weather - we always had a pleasant sea breeze! We had initially planned to stay just one night in Mui Ne as we were limited on time now in Vietnam as our visas were only for one month, so we would have to leave by the 8th June and still had Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City/ HCMC as it's officially called today) and the Mekong Delta to visit before then. But after our somewhat labourious journey, we decided two nights in Mui Ne would be required. Also, spending two nights with this at your back door wasn't too much of a sacrifice:

Unsurprisingly, we didn't have much on our schedule for Mui Ne. We stayed in a quieter part of the town in a resort with rooms and a pool, and backing directly onto this beach. Also, after the good times in Nha Trang, we decided a couple of days R'n'R was definitely in order.

That afternoon after settling into my own room (room to myself...hello - LUXURY!), I decided a little down time by the pool was in order. As I meandered towards the pool - everything I was doing on that day was in a lazy fashion, I spotted a familiar face in the pool. This British guy called Chaz that was in my dorm in the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel. And I know, it's getting ridiculous at how many people I knew that I kept bumping into! Chaz was travelling with another British couple - Adam and Melody, and I had chatted to them in Hanoi about Halong Bay. When they went, a couple of days after my notorious Halong Bay tour, there had been a massive storm and their boat had to turn back. Anywhoo, it turned out that they were following the same route as Zara, Dai and I - quelle surprise!

That evening I hung out our hotel with Chaz, Melody and Adam whilst Zara and Dai got some alone time from me and went to a nice Italian for what Dai described as *cue Welsh accent* "the best bloody steak I've ever had". We decided the following day we would be a little more productive and booked ourselves on a "Dune Jeep Tour". I had done a Dune Buggy tour in Dubai before and that was amazing. You drove into the desert in a 4x4 Jeep, they let down the air in the tyres and drove into the massive dunes, sending the sand surfing over the Jeep in massive waves. It was really thrilling, so I was well up for another dune experience!

This one, well...not quite the same! It all started out well, myself Zara and Dai were picked up at our "hotel", for the want of a better word, in a 4 x 4 Jeep - however the first thing I noticed was it was one of those open jeeps - you know the ones where there are no side panels - you just kinda jump in the back seat from the front? So yep, I was wondering how the hell we were going to drive into massive sand dunes, without well, DROWNING in sand?! To be honest we didn't really "research" our trip all that thoroughly - but it definitely had somethin with Sand Dunes in the title! Anywhoo, we had signed up now so off we went and just waited to see where we would end up.

Our driver introduced himself and told us that firstly we would visit "Fairy Walk". Now this wasn't some gay fashion runway, rather a stream of water that ran downwards that you could walk through, and the stream floor was a dark redish sand colour. He dropped us off at Fairy Walk, pointed us in the general direction of which we were to go and told us to meet him back at the Jeep in an hour. So whilst our guide kicked back with a bottle of Coke with his fellow Jeep drivers, we followed the other bewildered travellers along the path to "Fairy Walk". We began walking up stream, not sure what to expect. I was thinking oh maybe there's a supposed fairy fort or something at the end. I kept walking along, letting Zara and Dai go ahead. Now don't get me wrong it was a pleasant walk - but hell it just led nowhere!!! After walking for about a half hour - I bumped into Chaz, Adam and Melody who had also decided to do a dune tour, and asked them if they knew what the hell we were supposed to be here for! They too hadn't a breeze, so I decided, feck this, turned around and walked back to the Jeep, followed shortly by Zara and Dai who confirmed, that yes, there was sweet fuck all at the end of the stream! Well this was turning out to be a delightful day...

Dai exhibiting the thrill we all felt at Fairy Walk.

Determined to not give up on the tour just yet, we jumped back in our 4x4 ready to head to our next destination which we were told was THE DUNES. Hoooraaah! We drove for about an hour before reaching them, and they looked pretty good. We soon realised that the Jeep itself would be going nowhere near the dunes, as we saw lots of quadbikes racing over and around the dunes with people squealing with delight as they zipped along. Our guide pointed us in the direction of the quadbikes. We asked was the price included - and of course it wasn't. Unfortunately, it seems for every good value tour you go on, like the boat tour in Nha Trang, there is an equally bad value tour - i.e. THIS one. I can't remember the price to hire a quad bike exactly, but it was definitely expensive. And after paying for the tour we decided it wasn't within our budgets to pay it. Instead - we took up the offer of a Dune Slide from some local enterprising kids - i.e. a piece of plastic with a bit of rope that you could slide down the dunes on!

Of course in order to slide down the dunes, we had to firstly climb to the top. Funnily enough this was quite hot and sweaty, bearing in mind we were in the desert in afternoon heat - but on we trudged! We finally made it to what was the best peak, and did our best sliding, which admittedly was pretty shit:

Me with my high-tech aero-dynamically designed bit of plastic

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

After our lame attempts at sledding down the dunes, we went back to our Jeep. The guide was a bit disappointed that we didn't hire quadbikes, becauase as is the case on most tours - he would have no doubt gotten commission if we had! We told him flatly, that they were beyond our budget and we continued on! Our next destination, yes, you guessed it folks. More dunes - pretty much exactly the same as the ones we had just visited! We walked through them and watched the local kids slide down them, no surprise they exhibited a lot more skill and finesse than we did! Afterwards we headed back to our Jeep - all duned out!

It was definitely one of the more disappointing tours we'd endeavoured on, however you're gonna have that, and we didnt dwell on it for too long. We headed back to our hotel and began packing up for the next day. After a relaxing couple of days in Mui Ne we were ready to head to our final Vietnamese destination - the capital, Ho Chi Minh City! There we would have a lot to look forward to - the famous Cu Chi tunnels - used by the Vietnamese to outwit the Americans during the war, the War Museum, and a little cooking lesson Vietnamese style! So long Mui Ne...ya can keep your dunes ;)