On The 15th of May Nick and I got on a morning bus to Mui Ne and arrived around lunch time. After getting off the bus, we proceeded to the nearest hotel/beach resort and asked them how much. At US$30 a night, it was/is to be probably one of the most expensive nights we’ve paid to stay anywhere, with the average hotel with own bathroom and A/C costing only about US$9-12. The room however was the nicest we’ve stayed in and had a door at the back that opened to the beach.
After a short dip into the resorts glorious swimming pool complete with bar and Water fall, we decided to try the beach that was a whole 10m away. (Literally, here in Mui Ne, they’ve had some significant issues with erosion and much of the beach has become reinforced with concrete sandbagging.) Along the beach we ran into Andrea, Amara and Sam, people who were part of the tour in the Mekong Delta and it was here that was the birth of “The Real Easy Riders” in honour of the countless number of motorbiking tours here that call themselves “Easy Riders”. Mui Ne is famous for a number of things, in particular the beach and Kite Surfing, if you come the right time of year, which we apparently just missed, the water is filled with countless numbers of people kitesurfing or learning to kite surf. Its also famous for the neighbouring sand dunes, those that remind you of a desert scene in a Hollywood movie. The trouble is, they start from about 10k’s out of town, so we as a group decided to hire some scooters and set off to find this sandy wonders.
The First stop on our bikes, was one that just needed a picture to describe, from up on a cliff overlooking this small bay, we discovered the Vietnamese fishing culture.
And here is me, overlooking said cliff in my trendy biking gear.
Once out of town however, we were in for a treat, the roads were empty, the sky’s clear and the views were spectacular. Travelling along at speeds anywhere from 30kph to 80kph on our scooters we ALL wore huge smiles.
After only intending to find the closer of the dunes, (the red sand ones), we got a little lost and decided to try for the white ones, a little over 25ks out of town. We weren’t disappointed, and after paying 5000 dong to park our bikes in the shade and negotiating with a boy of about 8yo for 5 sand toboggans we headed up towards the sand.
Right beside the dunes was the Lotus pond, a superbly picturesque lake with a great outlook.
The sand was pretty hot, so it was a trade off as to where pluggers or not as we made the climb up the largest dune we could find.
At the top, Nick and Sam posed for a photo before starting a race to the bottom. It was kind of a let down with both of them coming to a stop within about 2m from the start. We modified techniques, and I found the best result came from a dive down onto the sand to get the momentum going.
After staying as long as we could, we packed up and headed back into town so we could make our buses coming in just after lunch time.
The cafe just next to the hotel was gloriously cheap, and served some of the best food around, and resulted in us eating there for pretty much every meal while we were in Mui Ne.
Kite Surfers just before we left. There were also a number of wind surfers trying the wind too.
It was suggested we take a sleeper bus for a little more comfort than the sitting buses, and boy were they right. Each person has there own bed and I could even stretch out almost completely. Haven’t taken a sitting bus since this trip for that added room. It’s three beds across by 2 levels, something that would make bus trips in Oz and probably everywhere else much more enjoyable.
Un fortunately we had our second flat tire of the holiday just out of town adding about a half hour to our trip while the local tire shop (read: every 100m down the side of the highway there is a tire shop) repaired the inner tube in the tire. Apparently pretty much all the tires here are tubed which I find fairly intriguing.
After a 4-5hr hour journey, the Easy Riders were in Nha Trang, the bigger beach city in Vietnam.
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