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Published: March 6th 2012
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The main attraction of the coastal town of Mui Ne is the sand dunes. White ones and red ones.
We arrived here Sunday afternoon and found a great little hotel with a pool. Very welcome after a long bus journey. The hotel was right on the beach front but the beach or sea wasn't very inviting at all. Probably been to too many beautiful islands recently!
We took a short walk along the one road that makes up the town to check out the bars and restaurants so we knew where to go for dinner later that night then spent the rest of the afternoon by the pool.
On Monday we joined up with two American girls and hired the hotel's jeep and driver to take us to the sand dunes about 25 kms away.
First we stopped at a place called 'Fairy Stream'. It sounded quite lame so we weren't expecting much. What a suprise, after a short paddle up stream we came to some very dramatic rock formations, they've probably been created by the wind on sandstone as this area is extremely windy, a warm wind fortunately! We continued paddling upstream for a good while
but had to turn back before reaching the waterfall as the guide had said 40 minutes and we didn't want to miss sunset later at the dunes.
We left the stream and drove to a fishing village where fish sauce is made, many of the homes had huge vats in their gardens making the sauce. The aroma was awful as you can imagine!
Next stop:The White Sand dunes, they were very dramatic and, despite there being many other tourists, if you pushed yourself to walk far enough you could get to sand that was completely untouched. The surface was quite crusty but as your foot broke the crust it sank into soft warm sand.
Sophie and Auriel our two companians wanted to roly poly down a huge dune opposite and have their photos taken from afar so I volunteered to climb to the ridge and do the honours. Right on the ridge the wind whipped over the sand covering every part of me that was unclothed plus parts that were clothed! Now I know the real meaning of sandblasting and I can tell you it's quite painful. Still it was worth it as the views were fantastic.
From here we made our way back to the Red dunes for sunset, the road leaving the White dunes was very rough and rocky, our driver decided to go 'off road' for a few minutes which was fine as the jeep coped with the soft sand no problems but then he got cocky and sped up back on the rocky road, hit a bump and burst the tyre. Great! We piled out and left him to change the wheel, he was pretty efficient and we were on our way in ten minutes. Just in time to scramble up the red dunes as the sun sunk in the sky creating magnificent colours in both the sky and the sand.
Back at the hotel we took a well earned dip in the pool, despite it being after dark the water was a gorgeous temperature as we swam under the stars.
We finished off with a delicious Chicken Kebap from a bar across the road owned by a German Guy. I love it when Europeans set up abroad, you get almost guaranteed good food. I know we should eat the local food, and we do mostly,
but it's so nice to treat yourself now and again!
Today we took the bus up into the mountains to Dalat, the town is 1,475 metres up. The journey was along roads that snake up and up with amazing views. The temperature is much cooler so may need to drag my fleece out when we go for dinner tonight!
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