Dune

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This is quite possibly the driest, sandiest and the hottest place we've been yet. Having been abandoned at the wrong hotel at 1am by a bus driver who thinks he knows where we are staying better than I do, we were in no mood for an early start to our day here. Mui Ne is basically a 6 or 7 km strip of beach with a fishing village at one end and resorts along the rest of it. You smell it before you see it because the town is Vietnam's premier producer of fish sauce. The beach is not all that and a bag of potato chips so the real reason to stop here is the sand dunes. We employed the services of a couple of local moped drivers to ferry us around the area, stopping first of course for a late breakfast of deliciouse noodle soup (fast becoming a physical addiction of ours).

The whole area is surrounded by sand dunes and scrub. However, in one small patch about 20km away from the village, the dunes are pure white and Sahara stylie. As soon as we dismounted the Hondas after an amazing coastal ride, which looked as though we were in California with the surfers, we were beset on all sides by child sales persons offering postcards, flutes, the usual crap. But two boys were different, saying "You want slide down?" while offering us large plastic mats. Oh, yes. Dune taboganning. Unthinkably stupid I trust you'll agree. The dunes are high and steep and, if one desires, one may slide down them.... why not just bury one's self in scorching hot sand and then eat some for good measure. It took Lara a week to wash the sand out of her hair and Andrew almost as long to remove it from places hither-to forgotten. Luckily we were the only people there, not being on a tour or anything, and were befriended by a lad who actully lived in the dunes. He, like many other children we have encountered does not go to school.

We definitely had more than a few "monday moments" today. Lara can safely say that a few months ago she had no idea that she would be sitting in a sand dune this monday having Vietnemese children wash her from a well before sitting down to a strange sort of lunch with a family whose only common focus with us was their tourist learned english translated by their 10 year old son and a pet baby monkey (the monkey was not translating). Very random!

We also took in a "canyon", which was ok but mainly closed off to the public. Presumably the soft sand formations were too dangerous to be climbing upon. This was followed by a waterfall. The walk to the waterfall, 2km up a red river called "Fairy River", was far better however than the water fall itself.

Mui Ne would be a good place to stop to sunbathe, but the tans are rapidly fading and with no will left to apply more suncream we are leaving for colder climes of northern Vietnam.

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