Blogs from Mui Ne, Binh Thuan, South Central Coast, Vietnam, Asia - page 35

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 ... read more

On Feb 9, we got up and had a free breakfast at the guesthouse. It comes with pineapple juice, Vietnam coffee, baguette, butter and jam. We left our big backpack in our guesthouse and reserved a room for our return. At 7:45, a representative of the the tour operator (TM Brothers Tour) came to the guesthouse to pick us up. On the bus, we met a cute Korean girl, who is 23 years old and in her fourth year of university. She is such a lively character and we really enjoyed her company. We also met a Chinese lady from Guilin who spoke excellent English. We later found out she is a teacher and had spent a year in the US. There are three tours -- 1-day, 2-day and 3-day Mekong Delta tours. Regardless of the ... read more

So, on Monday Feb 6 at about midnight, we finally arrived in Vietnam! Ho Chi Minh City! We both didnt really sleep on the flight, so we couldn't wait to find the closest hostel... We picked up a taxi to Pham Ngu Lao area (the traveller district), and were dropped at a hotel belonging to a "close friend" of the taxi driver. It ended up being far more expensive then he claimed, but we were tired, and it was quite a nice place, so there we crashed! Silly jetlag... no sleep again! We were still awake at seven, so we meandered down to the hotel Duna's dining area, where we had a great baguette (it's a standard pretty much for brekky here), and chatted with some nice Ausralians. The minute we walked out the front door ... read more

Finally made it. Rode a few km from the hotel, just beyond the fishing village, which does smell distinctly of fish sauce and parked my bike at the bridge under which runs the fairy stream. Immediately, 2 guides were at my side -- both around 10 or 11 years old. Their names started with Ph, and S. The only English they spoke was "$1" (which later transformed into "$5") and "camera" so I know very little about the stream, except that you hike up it, meaning in it. It's alternately ankle deep and knee deep and it becomes very, very red about 10 minutes in. Also some stark white stalagmites/stalactites (?), and arch ways which are sort of like Utah. The red eventually becomes these high sandy cliffs, punctuated by bannanna and palm trees. Then a ... read more

Have traded the horn-a-rama of Saigon for the crashing of the South China sea. It's much like the south china sea in Malaysia, tho a bit deeper, more quickly (same scary undertow tho) and the landscape around here is not quite as lush.. Still I'm relieved to report that Vietnam looks like Vietnam (but really Malaysia looked more like Vietnam). Rows and rows of palms swaying against a huge blue sky and wide, white sand beaches, turquoise water. You get the idea... My resort is a bit cheesy, as is the resort town and I've now resolved not to teach any more "tourism is evil" classes, lest I become even more of a hypocrite. I am proud to say that despite teh guidebook's advice to hagglehagglehaggle, I am NOT (yes, I know, it really goes against ... read more