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Published: June 19th 2006
Wednesday 14th June Paul - Woke up this morning at the terrible time of 7:30am. Not impressed with the early start but we had a bus to catch. Another of those horrible "Open Bus" tours. Or as we like to call them "The Frat Party" bus. "Narly man and lets go get fookin' wasted, yeah baby..." We were heading to Mui Ne if you didn't already gather from the title. It's basically one long beach resort with some huge and impressive sand dunes.
Anyway back to the bus. Another legendary journey where we sat in front of some guy who spoke to his "friend" next to him for the whole four hours about how he'd "you know, done this, done that and god YOU HAVE to do this in Australia and Thailand and Oh my god have you seen the fucking price of beer here...". The hilarious thing was he had never been to Australia or Thailand and had been travelling for 4 weeks. FOUR weeks! The bus seems to be full of these people who are FULL of themselves. It really really starts to grate after a while. Another guy was telling his friends how he doesn't write
in his diary anymore or write emails home because all he does is "Get fucking stoned every night and get wasted on beer, its great!" At least it makes us laugh but not sure I could take longer than 4 hours with these people...
Rant over, back to the trip. Arrived in Mui Ne and was ushered round a few resorts of hotels. Some were a bit pricey but as we were with Lauren and Pete we had a bit of barganing power as there was four of us. The resorts are fantastic, all on the beach and all clean. And all with televisions with football...
"Yes yes very cheap very cheap"
"But do you have football?"
"Football?"
"You know , World Cup?"
"Ah yes OF COURSE OF COURSE! Very cheap very cheap"
After a fair bit of walking we nailed down a BUNGALOW on the beach for $6. Not bad at all. So spent the rest of the day lounging in hammocks and drinking beer...sorry but that's what we did! An amusing side story, the water in our resort was double the price of the water next door. We insisted that we weren't going to buy
water from them unless they lowered the price to the same as next door but they didn't care. I pointed out that they were going to lose a lot of money because we would be staying two nights but they still didn't care. Do these people have money to throw away!? Next door was literally 20 seconds along the beach. Bizarre. Suffice to say we never bought water from our place.
Later on in the evening we booked a jeep to take us on a tour of Mui Ne. We would be watching the sun rise at the Red Sand Dunes, sledding down the White Sand Dunes and seeing a local fish market. Sounds fun! But we have to get up at 4:30am. All these early starts eh!? And you people who are working think you've got it bad? You should try this travelling marlarky, it's knackering!
Thursday 15th June Paul - England tonight! Exciting stuff. But first a 4:30am start. God Almighty!
Our Jeep was waiting for us outside our resort, complete with driver who couldn't speak any English. He gave us a cheeky thumbs up as we all clambered in, only 3 seats for
4 people... not that it matters in Vietnam. It was a really fun drive to the red sand dunes in our jeep. We cruised along the sea front for a while and took a really good video of it all. Arrived there and clambered up them. Hardly anyone else there, in fact there seemed to be more hawkers than people actually wanting to watch the sun rise. The sand dunes were fantastic, just like the photos and the sunrise was well worth getting up for. The way the light danced off the dunes was really special. Made our way back down the dunes, with difficulty, and had a bit of breakfast at a road side cafe as we were all pretty hungry.
Our driver then headed towards the white sand dunes. We weren't sure how far they were but it took a good 20 minutes to get there. The drive there was spectacular. We really saw Vietnam come alive that morning. We were in a very rural destination and everyone was getting up and going to work. This was about 6am at the moment. A lot of farmers were walking herds of brown cows down every road and we
would drive really slowly through the middle of them all. Masses of people were also crammed onto the back of farmer's trucks, obviously going to work on his farm. All the kids we saw would wave and shout "hello" as we drove past. I also noticed a lot of graves out in the country, and was reminded that it wouldn't be a good idea to go walking off the beaten track.
We approached the white dunes via a dirt track and could see them from miles away. It was gigantic (a big big love!!!) and much larger than the red ones. There was a lake in front of it all and it made for a lovely photo that you can see. As our jeep pulled up in front of them we could see we were the only people there. A little house was set back in a wood just in front of the dunes and loads of kids rushed to greet us with plastic sleds for us to race down the dunes. We pretended for a while that we didn't want to go sledding so the kids would lower the price down a bit. Hey, we're budget travellers!
Even at 6 in the morning it was boiling hot on the dunes. The walk to the middle of them all was tiring to say the least and we were glad we bought some water with us. After marvelling at the views for 15 minutes we relented to the kids and bought a couple of boards. We've got some amazing videos of sand sledding but until you see them you'll just have to imagine. Basically, Jackass crossed with English tourists! I went first and the kids convinced me to go head first! As soon as I had jumped on about 3 of them (seriously!) piled on top of me and we sped down the dune, at speeds possibly not safe for boiling hot sand. And definately not safe for Princess when she tried. Near the bottom Pete decided to try and jump on us all, not the best idea, and we wiped out completely. Fantastic. The kids were loving it. I wasn't loving the climb back up the dune though!
Laura and I took it in turns then, much to the kids delight, to speed down the dunes. After a few tries each we wandered back towards the jeep
with most of the kids wanting rides on our shoulders. They were quite cute. Although the older one kept kicking them a bit, but I think they all like a bit of violence...
Climbed back in the jeep and had another nice drive to the fishing village. This was particularly interesting even though we only stayed for about half an hour. I presume this is where most of the residents of Mui Ne and the surrounding area work as it was a fish docks but not quite like Immingham...
Basically it was a beach with lots of boats moored out in the sea and people on the beach under wooden huts preparing the fish that was being brought back in. The fish was then being transported by cow(!) and cart to the markets where it would be sold. Met a lovely little girl who was incredibly cute. She loved being on Laura's video camera and wanted to give us some shells for free. But we decided to swap her a Hong Kong badge for a shell. I think she was very pleased with that outcome.
After a brief visit to a red canyon (see photo, nice rock
formations but not very interesting) we stopped at a local market so Laura could haggle for some sanitary towels. EXCITING STUFF! Took some funny photos though.
Final stop of the day was at a local Vietnamese stream. I really enjoyed this walk as two local kids took us the full length of the stream to a tiny waterfall at the end. It was very picturesque and reminded me of Vietnamese war films that I've seen. At one point the kids tried to tell us that crocodiles prowled the stream and that without their "expert" help we could be killed. They were 7 and 9 respectively...
Arrived back at our beach hut at 11am and went straight to sleep in preparation for todays late kick off. We may as well have not bothered. England were terrible. If ever a cure for insomnia was needed, this is it! I think the less said the better. Dozed off to sleep in the end after meeting a guy from the BBC who has managed to get a year off work. He works for 6 music so I was very impressed.
Friday 16th June Paul - Our brief trip to Mui
Ne was at an end. As much fun as it is in a beach hut we will see more of this in Thailand no doubt. So we booked a bus for 2pm to take us back to the capital, Ho Chi Minh City. The morning was spent swimming in the sea, racing Laura back to shore on the waves and if I was losing, running a little of the way back to take the lead.
Got on the bus and I'll spare you the details of the lovely people around us. Got to Ho Chi Minh and went to the same hotel we stayed at last time. Here is how the conversation went...
"Hi, we stayed here a couple of weeks ago..."
"Ah yes, I remember you. I remember your face!"
"Good good. So anyway we had a room with air con for $8..."
"No no no no. It's $12 with air con. We have a sister hotel maybe you mean there?"
"Erm no. We stayed here. You just said you remembered me?"
"Who are you? I no remember you?"
"What? But... oh never mind it's your loss."
Finally checked in somewhere nicer for $7 with satellite
tv too. Can't argue with that. Spongebob Squarepants every morning! Brilliant! (Don't worry Mum, I know you won't know what show that is) Went out to eat straight away and then to bed as we were tired. Actually the only sleep I get is between games. First game is at 8, 2nd at 11, 3rd at 2am. So I just get an hours sleep between games then a good 5 hours after the final game. Not bad. Anyway that was Mui Ne! And it was great!
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Marr
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Got hold of the new Muse album, and it's... well. There's a song on there that sounds like Matt Bellamy is now a big Keane fan, and there's one which is a bad REM ballad, but there are a couple of absolutely brilliant tracks, notably Map Of The Problematique, an excellent live version of which can be found on youtube, although I expect you can't get sound in internet cafes