Vietnam - Mui Ne
11th August - A relaxing day in the SUN (well almost)!
We awoke in our nice cool clean room, and headed off for breakfast. Kat opted for a 'bean and cheese' toasty. Beans here are clearly 'green peas' in Salsa, not what she expected. That is the problem with ordering western foods in countries like this. Often things are quite literally 'lost in translation'.
The Monsoon doesn't seem to have affected this part of Vietnam, we were delighted to see no rain, but apparently Mui Ne is known to be the driest area,(it actually “sheltered peninsula” in Vietnamese) We couldn't resist a day on the beach.It was the most beautiful tropical beach, lined with groves of swaying palm trees.
Most of the day it was pretty overcast, but never the less, we spent our day relaxing, reading our books, swimming in the sea and playing with the guest houses lovely dog and her four beautiful puppies. That evening we went out for a rather expensive meal, it seems that this touristy area can up its prices, and we also bumped into three Italians that were on the Mekong Delta trip. That always seem to happen, we kept bumping into people we had met before on our travels.
12th August - Sand dunes, canyons and a Fairy Stream.
We were up very early to meet our personal driver in his open top 4x4 jeep and were headed off down highway one by 6am. Along the way there were fantastic views of the Pacific Ocean to our right, tall mountains to our left,fields of huge shrine like gravestones. We also spent a lot of time dodging herds and herds of animals including,cows, sheep, goats and of course water buffalo ,that were moving fields.
The first stop was the 'Hon Rom' White Sand Dunes, It was amazing, so vast, like a Saharan-style deasart, and had a beautiful lake at the foot of it filled with lotus flowers. It was surreal walking up these sand dunes as the day began seeing nothing but sand. Two little boys approached us; firstly introducing us to their interesting pets, such as puppies, monkeys, iguans, racoons and porcipines. Then they handed us a thin piece of blue plastic with string threaded through the top, offering them to us for a small price so that we could try 'sand stedging'. Of course we took up the offer. We walked as far as we could then sledged back down. It was hard to get speed at first but once you got going it was pretty funn, apart from the fact that the sand went EVERYWHERE...(I was still getting it out of my shorts pockets weeks later) The walk back up each time was pretty exhausting, with each step you took it seemed you slipped a third of the way back down again, so after about four turns, we gave the boys back their sledges and decided to move on before the sun got too hot.
Our driver was waiting for us and we then sped off to the Red canyons. They too were amazing. They were made entirely of hard sand that didn't crumble under foot. A little girl greeted us at the beginning to show us the way, but near the top she had to go back down, by this time the sun had climbed its way through the sky and reached its zenith so it was stiflingly hot. Kat decided to go back down and find some shade but Jenna and I were desperate to reach the top. I am glad that we did,were able to walk up amongst the ridges and grooves of the ridge to view the incredible appearance and colours of this natural phenomenon. There, no one hassled us trying to be a tour guide or offering a service to take our money, and it was very nice to enjoy the peace and tranquility of the spot. The views from up there were amazing. We could see so far, surrounded by these red sand mountains, with sand dunes in the distance and the sea to the other side, it was breath taking. If only it wasn't so hot, we could have stayed there a little longer.
The next place we visited was the Pink Sand Dunes, by this time it was becoming more busy and touristy. It was much better earlier in the day, when it was cooler and before the crowds, but I still enjoyed the sand dunes. As we climbed these ones, every time our foot slipped off our flip-flops the sand beneath us burned our feet, before to long we gave up and decided to visit a fishing village that we could see in the distance. When we got back to our driver, he said the fishing village that we must have seen would have been 'Muine Port'. My Dad would have absolutely loved it, the place was huge and full with local people hopping on and off their boats, men bringing in nets and women drying out millions and millions of little fish in the sun. To be honest the place stunk to high heaven, but it was an amazing place, and fun to see all these people getting on with their lives, not even noticing us three western girls paddling in the sea and taking photographs.
On the way back to our hostel our driver advised us that we should take a walk up 'The Fairy Stream' we started walking along the bed of this which led to a waterfall and had colourful sand banks along the sides. The water was really shallow and we walked along the stream in water for just over 1 km. A group of kids offered to be our “tour guides” as we walked towards the waterfall, but as the water was only 2-4 inches deep at the start of the stream, we declined their offer – we knew that they would ask for money for this service, and didn’t want to disappoint them or listen to them try to guilt us into not paying them anything when we got to the end of the stream. When we explained that we would not be handing out any cash to anyone, most of the kids left to haggle money out of other tourists, but three continued on, informing us that the water was very deep in places, and that we needed him to guide us away from the treacherous deep areas ( I doubt it). In the end after we told the boys, who looked at us with big sad eyes, that we had no money to pay them (which was actually true, we had left it all behind), I felt bad, but was relieved when they reluctantly departed our company.
As the sun begun to set in the sky we came back to our hostel, had a quick swim and shower then packed up and got on the night bus in the direction of 'Nha Trang'.
I think I can safely say that this has been one of my favourite days so far. I absolutely loved it, the sun was shining, everything was beautiful and I really enjoyed myself.
- Posted by emily1183 on 08/09/2007.
- emily1183's site
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