Mui Ne

Our bus driver from Dalat felt the need to accelerate down even the steepest of hills so we made it to Mui Ne considerably earlier than we were meant to. Arriving here put us back on Vietnam’s coastline which we have generally been following south for the last two weeks. We didn't have a firm booking in place on arrival but had made an enquiry at a resort just next to where we would be dropped off. However, it turned out the trusty company we had been using for the majority of our travel in Vietnam also owned a hotel in Mui Ne so, after inspection of the room, we instead opted to stay at the imaginatively named Mui Ne Resort.

Following a lunch, served by incredibly bored looking staff, we headed to reception to hire our transportation around the town; a motorbike. In 23 years I've never even come close to driving a motorbike, or even riding on one, but how hard could it be? The receptionist was rather surprised I didn't know how to ride a motorbike so had to ring a nearby rental shop to send someone over to teach me. To say the lesson was brief was an understatement as it consisted of turning the bike on, braking and the horn and lasted two minutes at the most. He left quite happy that I was now an experienced motorcyclist, however Linz needed more convincing so I went off on my own for a while to practice. My first test involved filling up the bike with petrol so I pulled into the nearest petrol station which was little more than a man with a barrel and a hand pump. I panicked slightly when asked how much I wanted as I had absolutely no idea how much petrol you can put in a motorbike. Quickly I found myself thinking if my car can take 50 litres then maybe 20litres would be about right. It turns out a bike can take 4 litres. This, combined with not knowing where the petrol cap was, suggested maybe I wasn’t the experienced motorcyclist yet.

Our bike on the deserted Mui Ne road

Regardless of this I picked Linz up and, after being shown by a local how to access our helmets from the space under our seat, we set off for an exploration of the beach town. Mui Ne is simply a 10km stretch of beach lined with resorts and restaurants and almost nothing else, but more importantly was a single straight road with very little traffic. We headed north towards a small fishing village where we found hundreds of local fishing boats docked along a section of beach so opted to dismount from the bike and have a wander. We then headed back south until we had passed through the entire of Mui Ne before going back to the hotel having clocked around 50 kilometres. Conveniently this was almost all in straight lines as turning corners is not my strong point.

A local fixing their nets in the fishing villiage. This was one of hundreds of small boats

Given our new found freedom we weren’t limited to local restaurants so headed to a BBQ place we had found earlier near the other end of town. After some seriously good kebabs we went for ice cream at a place over run with geckos which I suppose it can get away with seeing as it was called Geckos. Although we enjoyed a good desert, the highlight was Linz yet again failing to keep control of balls of ice cream resulting in further mint chocolate-chip embarrassment following her exploits in Hoi An.

The following morning we planned to visit the only sights in Mui Ne other than beaches. At which point Vietnam threw us yet another change of landscape as we found ourselves standing on scorching red sand dunes that seemed like they had been plucked straight out of the Sahara despite only being 10 kilometres from town. We had planned to visit the white sand dunes but after driving for 30 kilometres and still not getting anywhere near them we settled for just the red dunes.

Exploring the coastal road on the way to the dunes

Other than the surreal feeling of being stranded in the desert but with a sea view, the only activity is sliding down the dunes on sleds (mere sheets of plastic) which can be rented from the local children. As soon as we pulled up we were mobbed by the child-run sledding syndicate who followed us quite a way into the maze of dunes with little more to offer than the phrase “You slide down now?” Having negotiated over my sheet of plastic I was treated to a couple of rather tame rides down a dune followed by energy draining climbs back up them. It is unbelievable how difficult it is to climb a sand dune as for every two steps you take forward you sink one step back while all the time you’re crawling through thick sand which closer resembles boiling treacle. Linz had opted for flip-flops this day which was a mistake as they offer little protection from the heat of the sand, however our way round this problem wasn’t much better. Rather than go barefoot with the flip-flops I kindly offered her my socks which she hesitantly accepted knowing full well that that day I was teaming a red sock with a rather fetching chequered purple one.

Stranded

On the way back to town we stopped at the Fairy Spring which is a shallow stream running almost unnoticed through a red rock canyon just metres away from the main road through Mui Ne. Unfortunately, despite trying to get rid of him, we were accompanied by a local who we didn't ask for help and who we knew would ask for money when we got back. This wasn’t such a big deal and definitely didn't ruin our barefooted walk up the river. At least he used an original technique of getting money out of us as rather than claim we owed him money for his completely unnecessary services; the guilt trip. Upon saying we didn't ask or need his help, and that we would have rather done it on our own, he looked thoroughly distraught and on the verge of tears. I picked a note from my pocket knowing I had, at most, 70p to give him. He perked up.

Standing in the creek

Following the creek, and due to my rather brisk lesson earlier, we made our way back to the hotel with the indicator flashing the entire way as I didn't realise or know how to turn it off. We still had half the day so spent it around the pool as this was the first time we had one at our hotel. We decided to spend slightly more on our stay in Mui Ne as we wanted to enjoy the beach. In addition to the pool, our £10 each got us our own bungalow in a resort right on the sea with internet and a restaurant. Apparently though you need more than £10 to get staff with even a small amount of English or that don’t look like they’re a day away from committing suicide.

That evening we headed for a rooftop restaurant which served, among other things, various amphibians. I was tempted by the crocodile but it wasn’t until I saw the “BBQ special crocodile” that my intrigue was peaked. It was very nice but I have no idea what the BBQ special part was all about. Following another trip to Gecko’s ice cream joint, where Linz managed to behave herself, we returned to the hotel.

The next morning we boarded our daytime sleeper bus to Ho Chi Minh City which would be our first major city since Hanoi almost two and a half weeks earlier. The ride was fairly uneventful until we got to the city where we blown away by the sheer number of motorbikes. They say in Vietnam that the biggest vehicles get priority, however as we watched hundreds of motorbikes merge together at a junction we couldn’t help but notice that together they form one huge entity bigger than anything else you could get on a road. This was quite a shock given that in Mui Ne if we passed more than half a dozen motorbikes on a journey we thought it was heavy traffic. More than a two minute lesson would be required.