Arrival in Viet Nam

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We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City late at night after about 24 hours of straight travel. We were immediately overwhelmed by the intensity of the city. Motorcycles, bicycles, and cars everywhere. Every street filled with shops selling everything from hats and t-shirts to flat-screen televisions. We stayed in HCMC for the night and then quickly left for Mui Ne in the morning.

Mui Ne is a relatively quite beach resort northeast of HCMC. We found a beautiful resort right on the beach, where we stayed for three nights at only 12 USD per night! That even included breakfast!! Hmmm... breakfast. We got our first introduction to pho, which is noodle soup served with beef or pork. What a hardy breakfast! We mostly chilled on the gorgeous beach. There were very few beach vendors (in sharp contrast to Nha Trang and Hoi An) which allowed us time to sleep and read away the days.

We spent one day traveling around Mui Ne to see some giant sand dunes and a small fishing village. This whole area of Viet Nam is relatively dry (at this time of year anyway) and VERY sandy. There were cactii everywhere, which we totally did not expect. We had a lot of fun being lead around the White Sand Dunes by two boys. They have clearly mastered looking cute for Western tourists. This was also are first time starting to feel the tension between what is the "going rate" versus what we can afford. We gave the boys a tip of about 4 CAD for the hour, but soon afterwards were second guessing ourselves, since our motorbike guides were driving us around for hours for little over 1 CAD each. The $4 clearly meant very little to us, but I'm sure it meant a lot to them, especially when we saw the village in which they lived.

The fishing village was awesome to see. It was so cramped! There were boats, people, and motorbikes everywhere (this will be a theme I'm sure) and even oxen. The weirdest thing though was at the far end of the village. There were four or five bars/cafes unde under tarps, with brand new televisions and men gathered around drinking, smoking and watching football. We never see women sitting around like this. Anyway, the brand new tv's just seemed so out of place, when everything around them was made from tarps, thatch, and sticks. Very unexpected.

We have some really cool photos of Mui Ne and our motorbike trip to the sand dunes and the fishing village, but this internet cafe doesn't offer a USB connection, so we have no way of transferring the files yet. We'll post some photos soon.

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Photos

Our beach bungalow
We had a really nice bungalow less than one minute from the beach.

The beach in Mui Ne
Compared to some of the other beaches we have visted, the beach in Mui Ne was the quietest and cleanest. Very nice!

Comments

[Adam]

Cousin Adam
Very cool. Mark, Mom and Dad are up visiting Gina and I (Dee is coming later) we really enjoy reading about the progress of your adventure keep it up! Love Adam and everyone else