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Published: March 4th 2011
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I mentioned to a friend in Vung Tau that I was heading to Mui Ne for a week in which she exclaimed in a very surprised manner, "What on earth are you going to do in Mui Ne for a week?"
Mui Ne is about a 4hr bus ride from Ho Chi Minh costing about $7 or $8 if, like me you came from Vung Tau. The Bus ride is, to say the least a hair raising experience with traffic as chaotic as always. One of expats advised me to always travel by train in Veitnam as the buses are often in road accidents and as I sat on this bus knowing I had completely ignored his advice, I was silently praying we would make it there without incident.
A near miss with another bus, saw the young Veitnamese guy beside me, launch like a missile right out of his seat and land in the aisle, while other passengers were all muttering but took it in their stride as just another day on the road.
My bus left at 5:30am which meant I was up at 4:30am, in any event it did not matter how tired I was, I was most cetainly not taking my eyes off the road. Not that it would have helped but maybe a little notice of the unexpected would allow me to hang on just that bit more tighter.
The bus pulled over at a little pitt stop along the way which I happily got off and lit a ciggarette in an effort to bring myself to getting back on. I sat with a Veitnamese man (Howard) and had a Cafe Da and chatted for a while. We exchanged names and before to long it was back on the bus for the next leg of the journey to Mui Ne.
At some stage I did actually fall asleep only to be woken by someone calling my name. Not used to anyone knowing me let alone my name caused me to take a few seconds of realisation that it was Howard calling out to me. We had arrived in Phan Thiet and it was time to change buses. Thanks Howard!
Mui Ne is only about 15km from Phan Thiet and you are most likely going to go on a mini bus with lots and lots and lots (get my point) of people. My backpack started with it's own seat, than it sat on the ground, than beside me, than it sat right on my lap with my smaller backpack squeezed on my lap also. Slowly the locals were getting off until eventually there were just a few of us left and my backpack resumed its own seat again. Ahhh, dead legs and numb feet.
Mui Ne consists of one long road known as D Nguyen Dinh Chieu and it stretches out along the coast passing many resorts, cafes, restuarants and guest houses. If you are like me and did not book a room then you have no fixed point to get off in which I stayed on the bus thinking it would eventually pull up in the centre and let the last few of us off. (in which case were the two girls travelling with me and two russian ladies) The bus did pull up and did let us off only to realise we had driven right through Mui Ne and into another township.
So with a lot of laughs we hopped on another bus with another ticket for 50c. Eventually we jumped off at a random stop and let our feet direct us to a Guest house in which we found no problem. A pool sealed the deal and for $10US per night I unpacked my backpack in my new home for a week.
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