Mui Ne – A little R&R

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A flight from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, an overnight stay in the reliable and friendly Madam Cuc’s, a reliable Sinh Tourist bus down to Mui Ne and we arrived for a bit of R&R (our treat to ourselves). Not that we aren’t having a treat all the time on this adventure, but a bit of chill time is definitely needed every now and again! Everything we had heard about Mui Ne led us to believe that it might be a bit more upmarket than we were used to lately, but we would turn up and try not to lower the tone of the resort too much! As the principle activity here is lying on the beach and catching the rays it would be just what we needed after the chill of China, as long as the weather was good that is. We had been due to arrive in Mui Ne a week earlier, but because of the flippin’ disgusting weather we had postponed it – fingers crossed. So basically this means that this blog entry is going to be really, really short (hurrah we hear you all cry).

Arriving into Mui Ne we passed resort after resort after resort, all varying in size but all with one thing in common – expensive looking. We had booked into Grace Boutique Resort for our week of relaxation and were absolutely delighted when we arrived at our destination. It was small, intimate and so very friendly. We were greeted by the owner, Van, and after a cooling watermelon drink were shown to our room complete with balcony overlooking the infinity pool. Not only did it have an infinity pool, but one that was big enough to actually swim in and not just for dipping - heaven. It was lucky that the pool area was so great because the beach was, to be quite honest, a bit pants. Although it stretched as far as we could see, 10km approximately, due to the time of year the tide was permanently almost touching the edge of the resort, so it was more of a path than a beach. Never mind though we were more than happy with the cool blue waters of the pool.

Day one and our itinerary consisted of having a very nice breakfast on the terrace, lying by the pool after applying the factor 50+, dipping in and out of the water, lunch, more of the morning’s strenuous sunbathing activities and then dinner. Day two found us having a very nice breakfast on the terrace, lying by the pool, dipping in and out of the water, lunch, sunbathing and swimming and then dinner. I am sure by now that you can see a pattern emerging! This would be our week – nice. The only change – on some slightly cloudier days Chris did reduce the factor 50 to factor 20.

Towards the end of our stay the owners, Van and Loan, invited us for dinner with them. Along with another British couple we had a very enjoyable evening which meant chatting about an array of things with people that neither of us are married to, what a pleasure ;-)

Mui Ne offered lots of restaurants offering fresh fish bbq’d (not that cheap mind you). Great little boutique hotel; a real family affair, nice room, great pool and luckily great weather for the majority of the week – everything we asked for. To make it even more perfect, the hotel wasn’t full, so the poolside was relatively quiet all week, in fact it almost felt as if we were staying with Van and his family (until he presented us with a bill, then again so did our parents in the summer (only joking!!)). Seemed a shame to move on, but we had to. Did we like Mui Ne – yes we did, but when (not if) we come again to Vietnam we will probably give it a miss. Nha Trang, with its fantastic beach and greater array of pubs, café & shops is definitely more our thing. Mui Ne, until it develops a bit more (which it is rapidly), is definitely for weekending Saigoners, all-inclusive resorters or very pale Russians (of which there were loads).

So at the end of the week, sporting two very nice tans, we were on the bus to Nha Trang (due to some difficulties in getting a train ticket from the station at Muong Man) bumping along roads which had been partially washed away by the ongoing monsoon, then a sleeper train to Hue (about 15 hours) and then the bus over the border to Savannakhet and our next destination, Laos. The adventure continues …….


(Note for fellow travellers: Getting out of Mui Ne to the South is easy, a short bus ride to Saigon. If you want to catch the train then Muong Man is about 35Km away but none of the good South-North trains stop there, in fact no trains with soft sleepers do, the ticket office at Phan Thiet tried to pretend that the 6 bed hard sleepers with a pillow are soft, they really aren’t. Your best bet is a bus to Nha Trang and catch a train from there, simply go to the station when you get there, it’s in town and the ticket office staff speak English, and book your onward passage.)

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Photos

To infinity
and the pool

Do we look
relaxed yet?

Flora
- bootiful

Chillaxing
as only Ted can

The evenings catch
and all the locals join in