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Published: December 22nd 2006
Sunrise at Mui Ne
Ali decided she didn't feel like sleeping this particular morning so made me roll out of bed for sunrise. It was worth it. Just a quick update on my final days in Vietnam! Ill backtrack a bit to Mui Ne. One of my favouritre places so far. Mui Ne is just one roadd with restaurants and hotels. We were told it was wiped out by a typhoon just a couple of weeks beforehand and im not surprised. Im pretty sure engineers were not involved in the planning of Mui Ne as every single property is built just metres from the beach. Whilst this was fantastically convenient for us, heaps of places need sandbags to keep the water out on a clear day! So we spent a much needed 3 days beach bumming, not needing to move far, as our hotel delivered food to us on the beach. The other greatest thing about Mui Ne is the sand dunes, and even better, sandduning. There are massive sanddunes about 45mins drivein a jeep out of Mui Ne. We awoke at 4:30am in order to arrive at the dunes for sunrise (its way too hot in the middle of the day) Sand duning involves making your way to the top of the dunes and sliding down on a tiny plastic board anyway you can! This continues until
Sand duning!!
This is Ang, right before she hits a bump and stacks it majorly! a) you cant make it to the top of the dunes anymore, or b) the number stacks outnumber the safe arrivals at the bottom of the dunes. It was a crazy amount of fun and one of my favourite activites so far. Tried to upload a video but its taking too long, so i've put up a picture of Ang, right before one of the best stacks of the day!
From Mui Ne we travelled to Ho Chi Min City. Our last majour destination here. HCM is much bigger and busier than Hanoi. Its also much more western than Hanoi and Ive seen fast food joints for the first time in 6 weeks. Needless to say, its actually quiet obvious that the people here are proportionately larger. At least we can buy clothes that fit now! Our first outing from HCM was to the War Museum and the Cuchi tunnels (underground base of the Viet Cong during the Vietnam war). The museum was absolutely amazing and depicted both sides of the war really well. THere was even specimens of fetus's affected by agent orange. The tunnels were unbelieveable, and i still struggle to comprehend that people actually lived down
Cuchi Tunnels
Yep, these are more than double the original size!! And its not so much the size but the heat down there that is most unbearable! them for years! The tunnel opened up to tourists is double the size of the actual tunnels (as our guide frequently reminded us we have fat arses), which is totally amazing. In fact, i only made it 30m before making a quick exit!
We have also done a quick 2 day tour of the Mekong Delta. The Mekong is the massive river down here, so we got to spend lots of hours on a boat, checking out floating markets and stuff. It was all pretty cool except boat rides seem to put me to sleep? So i slept an awful lot of the way!
Luckily while in HCM, we met up with Lins and Gizl (friends who did a placement in Thailand. Dinner was nice, as was the reccomendation to do the all you can eat chocolate buffet at the Sofitel. Needless to say the very next day we arrived at the Sofitel for the bestest lunch/dinner ever! It was a chocolate lovers paradise... a massive chocolate fountain to dip fruit skewers in, big slabs of chocolate, mousses, cakes, the small gourmet sampler chocolates..........it was awesome.
After a day of last minute shopping today, I think thats
Mekong Delta
One of our smaller boat rides on the Mekong Delta about it from Vietnam! We fly to Thailand tomorrow for a much needed holiday after a holiday if that makes sense!
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Simon
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Chocky buffet
Dani was impressed with the idea of a chocolate buffet! Did any one manage to go down that sand dune standing up?