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Published: November 3rd 2007
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Spinning Fire at Wax Beach Club
Pon our bartender provides nightly entertainment on the beach of our hotel café. I expect to see him at Burning Man’s fire conclave next year. Tuesday, October 30th - Thursday, November 1st
Not far from the chaos of Ho Chi Minh City is Mui Ne - a small beach town with a slower, peaceful pace and an agenda full of absolutely nothing. I found a great hotel right on the beach with a great bar/café and my own bungalow with AC and a hot shower only a few steps from the pool overlooking the serene South China Sea…all for $15/night.
The soft and grainy beaches of Mui Ne stretch for 5 miles and are lined with rickety guesthouses, charming bars, cozy cafes and restaurants with many newer hotels popping up that pamper to Europeans on holiday. You can always tell a European by his bikini style bathing suit…I ponder the idea of slipping into one but knowing I would look just as ridiculous as they do, if not worse, I decide to stick to my board shorts.
For the next day and a half I do nothing but lay in the sun, sip Saigon beers; my biggest decision being whether to swim in the pool or the warm green waters of the South China Sea. Oh the life of a nomad! On day
Vietnamese Killer Jellyfish
It’s actually my bed’s mosquito netting lit from below by my ipod. 2 two I awoke at dawn to catch the sunrise but it was overcast - I have no luck with sunrises and sunsets in SE Asia. Damn this rainy season! So I sit on the beach and watch the villagers heading out through the surf to fish the waters in large circular baskets that look like UFOs or old school sledding discs. These baskets are 6-8’ around and made of tightly woven bamboo strips containing a set of oars and a 2’x4’ plank across the middle used as a seat. They lean precariously close to the waters edge as the paddle forward and are amusing to watch.
Next to me many locals are pulling in fishing nets laid down by the UFOs the previous night that are hundreds of yards out at sea, Curious, I sit and watch. The process is laborious and time intensive. Nine individuals of vastly varying ages, each with a rope tied around their waist, clip onto the main rope attached to the net and slowly walk backwards up the beach. As the last person reaches the end, they unclip and move to the front and clip back on the rope. This goes on for
News Alert: “UFO Lands at Mui Ne Beach”
Vietnam’s “Deadliest Catch”. It’s either this antiquated basket or a larger wooden boat for a fishing vessel. I guess you make do with the resources available to you. They’ll spend the entire evening at sea laying down their nets. over an hour as they work their way down the beach. I lose patience and turn back in for a few more hours of sleep. That day I met Leafey, another female traveling slo through SE Asia, and we spend the day and evening in the cafe exchanging stories, drinking beer, laughing and shooting the three worst games of pool ever played (she won) as the sound of the ocean's wave crashing a few feet away accompany the bar's lounge music.
My last day in Mui Ne I rise at 4:30 AM for a jeep tour of the sand dunes, red rock canyon, fishing village and “Fairy Stream”. My companion for the day is Clause, an older German man on holiday, or escaping his 2nd wife and children for a month. I’m not sure which it is. We watch the sun rise over the sea from the white sand dunes and explore the many peaks and valleys of the dunes as if we were two Lawrence of Arabia’s…without the camels and guns. The red canyon is anticlimactic - pretty much a small stream cut through the red clay leading to the sea. The red san dunes lack a wow
Inside the UFO
I thought an office cubicle was a bad place to spend 12 hours a day. Imagine doing it at sea in the black of night.
factor but we’re entertained by 15 children who hound us, “you slide down”. They want us to “rent” their plastic toboggans to slide down the dunes. The kids looking for handouts can be worse than the beggars but they provide a much greater entertainment factor.
The highlight of the tour was the fishing village where the bay was full of hundreds of small boats and more basket rowboats. There’s a flurry of activity as the unloading of the evening’s catch takes place followed by the sorting, shucking and counting process by the village women on the beach. I can only imagine the numerous health code violations that would be broken if this took place in the U.S. We moved onto the “Fairy Stream” - a small and shallow meandering sand bed creek that cuts through the dunes and provides a vastly different view of Mui Ne when compared to the fishing village. Our self-appointed guide is Chon who is more than happy to lend his services for a small fee - everything costs you something in SE Asia!
In the afternoon I take a 16-hour bus ride north to Hoi An where I’ll spend a few days before
Sun Rise at the White Dunes
Taken from the backseat of our Jeep as we approach the white dunes. continuing north.
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WazzaSof
Warren & Sofie
Nice pictures
Mui Ne does indeed have its moments. I have been to the Fairy Stream too and never found out the source of the name either. The search continues....