On the way to Mui Ne Beach

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Here we are at the beach. What I can't really believe is that this means we are approaching the halfway mark of our trip.

It was a long slow drive to get here - about 4 hours of travel time and an hour or so of hanging around, Everyone is on the road heading home for the holidays, their mopeds and motorbikes loaded to the gills with gifts and bags.

Here we are in paradise, I guess. Actually I am feeling a little flat at the moment but really don't know why. The resort is everything one could want in a seaside location with quiet, thatched roof bungalows surrounded by palm trees, all facing the sea and nicely secluded. The place is immaculate and pristine. I think that may be a little bit of the problem for me - we could be anywhere - I don't feel like we are in Vietnam anymore. The only locals here are the staff who, by Vietnamese standards, have it pretty good. Most visitors are from Europe with the odd Aussie in the mix. Let's put it this way, everything is in English, French and German. Some hotels advertise everything in Russian and there are quite a few Russian people here. I guess it is very close for them. This is is just an observation, not a complaint. One young Australian guy told us that Vietnam is really opening up for the Aussies with special fares and packages. Maybe it will become their new Bali. There are also quite a few expats enjoying the Tet holidays away from Saigon.

My advice to anyone thinking of come to Vietnam would be - do it soon. There are giant western style hotels being constructed all over the place, some complete with Casinos (for overseas guests only) - especially between Danang and Hoi An, which looks set to become the Miami of Vietnam - yuck.

It doesn't help that Don is sick at the moment. Such a shame when we have come this far with out any tummy problems. Oh well, better whilst we are here at the beach rather than when we are on the road. It is a shame for him as he loves the beach time and the buffets!

We asked at Reception if they were doing anything special in the hotel to celebrate Tet. The answer was 'no, our guests are not interested.' What a shame. We decided to see if we could find something off the premises. In the evening we went for a walk along the road where there are lots of little restaurants and tourist shops. We made a few enquiries about Tet and the average was $50 US a person (just like New Year's Eve) excluding beverages. We decided that with Don's tummy being in bad shape, we couldn't do something like that justice, so we will give it a miss.

More on the beach in the next blog, which ! am working on at the same time as this one, It is funny that in the less expensive hotels there are many computer stations while in the higher end places such as this there is only one. Mind you I see many people working on their laptops. So one has to seize the moment with the blogs as you never know when there are going to be power outages or crashes.

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