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Published: July 29th 2008
Ominous
Is it going to stormSo we headed from Long Hai up Mui Ne. We had quite a bit of an adveture getting there as we did not take the main road. We took a small coastal road and went the wrong way quite a few times. I nailed a chicken on the way up as well, but he seemed pretty unfazed by it. We also learned that asking directions is just a bad idea here. They have no clue where you want to guy, but they really want to help so they try. We even had a few people hop on their bike and has follow them and they still take us to the completely wrong way.
We also learned not to stop at a bus stop to ask directions. We figured we just saw a lot of people there, might be a good place to stop and get a bit of directions. We asked about Mui Ne and three guys hopped up like alright lets go. They just hopped on the back and we drove the next 20km to Mui Ne. It was quite a sioght to see me riding in the rain with my poncho over me and my backpack between my
Bumper Bikes
Hey whatever makes you feel safe right? legs with 2 Vietnamiese guys behind me.
Anyways we arrive in the rain after 6 hours of driving and try and check into a room. Well they took our passports in Saigon for the bikes and the hotels would not let us check ion with out them. We had to go to 3 hotels before we found somebody that would let us use the copies we have. They made us pay in advance though.
Mui Ne is rather interesting and I had not expected to see anything like that in Vietnam. It surrounded by large sand dunes that look like the Sahara desert. They have with and red sand dunes depending on where you go. At one of the sand dunes we were invited into anither local party with about 20 people or so. They shared their fruit with us a gave us some home brewed rice wine. It seems like they really enjoy inviting foreigners into their parties. You can tell tourism is still new here because of interested they are in us. We just took our bikes and went exploring. We found a really cool little fishing village and everybody seemed very happy to have a
Daily Catch
Want some fresh live crab. here is the place to get it foreigner there. They pulled us into their fish shcks and showed us their octopus and crabs and ket us take photos.
They had really fresh seafood in Mui Ne. There were restaurnts where they had live fish, clams, shark, oysters, lobster, crab and other things in a tank, You go to one side and pick out what you want the they cook it for you. Unfortunately it was a bit expensive for us, but we still enjoyed some great seafood at other restaurants.
The beach in Mui Ne has a serious erosion problem and their is almost no beach near the places we were staying. We had to drive aboput 4 km to 10km away to get to the good beaches.
Chuck got bit by something in the Philippines and it turned into this big swollen thing on his arm that oozed pus. We wound up stopping at a local pharmacist and he cut the thing open and squeezed the pus out until it bled. He only charged chuck $0.75 for his services. The room was not exactly sterile but I think all in all everybody had a good time. The best part is that the whole
Market Time
Getting Chuck's first dragon fruit ready to eat thing was done with no verbal communication. He did not speak english and we obviously do not speak Vietnamiese. Rather interesting I would say.
They alos dry a lot of fish in the sun in Mui Ne, I guess they make a lot of dried fish paste their so there are many places thats smell disgusting. It is mostly a fishing community so all the time you see boats in the water with nets. Our villagers pulling in long nets onto the beach. Another really cool thing is all the whole american jeeps that we must have left after the war. There are a lot of old U.S. Marine Core jeeps here.
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Mom
non-member comment
Wouldn't like Vietnam!
Hey honey, So far I am least liking Vietnam....however I am sure you are liking it except I don't think you were really there. Put yourself in one picture so your family believes that you too are visiting this country! Great pictures...you taking a pic of a guy taking a picture. Funny. No one here believes that you are there...get into some pictures!!!!!!!!!! We love you and have stopped saying "Don't eat that!" Love Mom