Mui Ne:

February 28th, 2005 - March 1st, 2005

Greetings...

We have started our journey northward in Vietnam. We left Saigon early Monday morning and arrived in Mui Ne Beach around lunch time. We spent two nights there to check out the amazing sand dunes along with more time cooking in the sun on the white sand beach along the South China Sea.

We bought an open bus tour ticket for $29 USD which takes us from Saigon to Mui Ne, Dalat, Nha Trang, Hoi An, Hue, and Hanoi. The company has offices in each town and you just let them know the day before you want to go and they arrange you a seat on the bus.

The buses are good 40-seat buses with air-con... we went with a reputable company (based on good word of mouth) because in other countries you get shown the photo of one bus and then put on a shit-heap like in Thailand and Cambodia...

We found a nice place along the beach in Mui Ne with standard bungalows for a reasonable price. The owners are friendly and they have great seafood - which is important when eating chicken is a "no-no" in this country due to the Avian Flu. In fact, Vietnam has surprised us with how much (and how good) the seafood is.

Some travellers have found Vietnam to be unfriendly but so far we have found just about everyone to be friendly. Compared to Cambodia, Vietnam has recovered quite well from so many years of war. In fact, Vietnam is very advanced technologically - some of the fastest Internet in SE Asia has been found here. Not to mention the cafes are packed with kids on computers all day long.

The tour of the sand dunes in Mui Ne was good. The white dunes were unlike anything I had seen before and they were peaceful unlike the dunes in India. We were the only people on top of the dunes to watch the sun rise and we had them to ourselves for nearly half an hour.

We also went on the yellow dunes which are closer to town and more touristy. Local kids rented us crazy carpets or magic carpets and we slid down the dunes. I was a bit too big to get the right momentum, but Jess seemed able to do it better.

Following, we walked down an almost dry river to reach what the locals call the "Fairy Spring" ... there is some story behind it, but we didn't see any signs of the legend of the fairy! It was nice scenery, though.

We now leave Mui Ne and are heading for the highlands and the romantic getaway of Dalat.

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