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Published: November 25th 2011
by Jan Ticket drama
We visited seven different towns in the first three weeks in Vietnam. Now it was time for some rest and Mui Ne, a small beach town, seemed like the perfect place for it. But first we had to get there.
We reserved our seats on the bus a day before, went back to the tourist office in the morning and everything was fine,.., until it wasn't! We already started our journey, picked up some more people from other hotels across town but then returned back to the starting point. At that point we were called off – the ticket lady telling us that our ticket is valid only to Saigon, but not for Mui Ne.
Polona was already fuming so I figured it might be better if she stays on the bus and lets me deal with it. Surprisingly, even with my short temper, I am now more than capable of just taking it easy when in situations like this – it's not like you get anywhere by getting upset in Asia.
The problem was, that when we were changing buses in Na Trang, this four-eyed genius took our ticket booklet
and replaced it with a receipt. We warned him that we are also stopping in Mui Ne so he just added (to this same receipt) “MN” and that was supposed to be that. But it wasn't! His laziness caused a real “situation” involving about 10 people from their office, not to mention about 50 people waiting for a bus for over half an hour. Now, I love Vietnamese people, they are so nice, but they are just sooooo disorganized. So after explaining our side to about 6 or 7 different people, the last one being the manager of the Na Trang office over the phone they finally let us back on the bus and all 50 something people were OK to go. 😊.
The best part of this is that the person in the office a day before had no problems with the ticket we had, neither did the girl working there in the morning, it was the ticket lady on the bus (I imagine she is the least paid of the group) who did her job properly. And she did, while the others just did not care. Ohhh well!
Mui Ne Four hours on a narrow
bumpy road in the middle of nowhere and we finally arrived in Mui Ne. Before the bus even stopped we were in for a shock, it was like arriving to Russia (just sunny and with a sand beach). Most of the signs are written in Russian cyrilic...All restaurants menus are in Russian as well, some places don't even have an English or Vietnamese version, just Russian. Well, welcome to “little Moscow”.
We quickly found a place to stay at (10 USD per night) and went out to find something to eat, passing loads and loads of expensive “Russian” places. Polona noticed a place and went “check it out, they have plastic chairs, they have to be local and cheap” and she was right – looking for plastic chairs always seems to get you a bargain deal in Vietnam 😊. This place, situated right next to the beach, with you feet in the sand, became a second home for the next few days.
By this point we already changed our plans and said we will leave Mui Ne in a day or two (instead of taking the rest we talked about) as the first impression was really bad. The
main reason why we came was to visit and slide down sand dunes close to town. I noticed a tour advertisement when getting off the bus so we decided to book it for the same day, not to be lazy – if we only knew what was coming up for the next few days.
The tour cost 5 USD and it actually involved a few more things than we though – JACK POT 😊. Besides the sand dunes we also stopped at a local fishing village and not just one, but two sand dunes places – the white dunes and the red ones.
Well, we didn't actually stop at the fishing village, but just on a parking lot giving you a great view of the village and the port in-front of it. I have never seen so many boats in my life. There had to be hundreds and hundreds of all different sizes – the smaller ones for one day fishing trips, while the big ones go out for weeks at the time. As the boats are a bit far from the coast the fisherman use round “pots” (they look like a giant coconut cut in half) to
reach them.
Next stop were the white sand dunes where we wanted to slide down. We rented two boards (really thin plastic boards with some string to hold on to on one side) and off we were. We climbed up one of the dunes and tried it out – see the videos. My first attempt was a disaster! I found, what I thought was, a really great spot, very steep dune leading down to the water. I sat on and tried to slide but hardly moved. Polona (a supportive, loving gf, that she is) just laughed and laughed – don't worry babe your turn is still to come. Then she sat on her board, I started recording a video (with a working title: Big White Whale getting stuck) and off she was – well not really, she got just as far as I did – not far at all.
A group of other keen “borders” was coming up the dune, led by a Vietnamese guy and he told us to follow him. He took us higher up and showed us how to do it properly. Ahhh, you have to put sand on it, go face first and get
a push from someone. I was off first and it was amazing, you get a lot of speed but even more sand in your eyes, mouth, ears etc.. The bad part of it is climbing back up to the top, it gets really hard as you slip down a bit with every step you take.
Next we had a race! As you can see in the video Polona won 😞, I think because of her weight advantage or is it dis-advantage I keep forgetting. Maybe for the best of it, she is a very sore loser so at least she was in a good mood – she did break her board which might be the reason that she didn't gloat for the rest of the day. I slid down two more times and it was time to go back – on our way most of the people handed their boards to a local collecting them. Polona was worried that she will have to pay for her broken board so we burred it in the sand 😊, it's not like the guy was counting them – Jay and Daniela found our board next day and used it – they still
owe us the 30.000 dong for renting our board 😊.
Next we were off to the red dunes to see the sun set – yes romantic, I know. We were running a bit late so when we arrived some people started running up the hill not to miss it. Crazy, we just slowly followed and still made it in time for a few nice pics. And that was it for the day, I can not remember when was the last time we actually did something on the day when we changed cities – a very active start indeed, but that was it for the four days spent here.
Next morning we went to our plastic chair place and just observed the people kite surfing! It looked awesome, I could not stop looking at a guy doing all sorts of tricks: jumping, sliding on the waves (see yet another video). I just starred and then moved on to taking pics of him. Polona named him “your boyfriend”. Well, I didn't mind, he looked much better than this skinny Russian girl who had short hair on most of her head but a long pony tail at the back, that I
named "Polona's girlfriend" earlier that day.
We did check the prices for kite surfing as I would've loved to try it, but they are insane – 60 USD per hour and you need at least 7 hours to get a hang of it! We actually met a Slovenian (living in Sweden) instructor who told us you can do it cheaper in Sweden than in Vietnam – crazy!
Besides going for a short jump in the sea our activities in Mui Ne were wrapped up in the first 24 hours there – then we just rested. The quick swim was nice, I got thrown around by the waves while Polona didn't make it far: she went in and the firs wave knocked her down and then she was just trying to get out with more and more waves putting her back in the water – well she didn't manage to swim but she did bring about a kilo of sand in her bra and panties back – you reckon we can sell it? 😊.
For the next 2.5 days we did nothing! We kept postponing our departure (we got over the first impression), spent some time with Kris
and Kristina (who are now surely back in Poland already) and Jay and Daniela, fellow Londoners, watched TV (yes Sergej, watched TV instead of being active!) and just sat around.
I started our blog with a tale about great “organization skills” that Vietnamese people posses, so I will finish it with another: at the plastic chair place we hardly ever paid our bill in full. Not because we didn't want to, but because we were ordering things in rounds – we sat there for hours and were ordering more coffees and shakes as we went along. But when the time to pay came they had only the first (and maybe one more) order written down. We tried correcting them and pay more, but they though we are trying to scam them (paying more?!?!) and didn't let us. Can't complain.
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