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So the next day, I get up say goodbye to the Danes and head 3 doors down to get the bus to Mui Ne, couldn’t be more perfectly located. Got on the bus for the few hours journey and the bus is brilliant. Free water and wifi (yep it’s the small things in life) and it’s a sleeper bus, great for me but not sure if taller people would find it as comfortable. The seats are virtually fully reclinable…love it and managed to get a few hours kip in. They even dropped people off outside their hotels / hostels, this is pretty easy as there is only one road through Mui Ne and all the accommodation spots and closely located. I had booked Mui Ne Backpackers Village and apart from the rooms looking like a hospital ward it was great, with a pool, no bunk beds, decent bar and good crowd of people. As I had there wasn’t loads to do around here, I spent the afternoon soaking up the sun and making the most of the pool. Got chatting to another Hannah and we went off to explore the strip that makes up Mui Ne by enjoying a fresh coconut along the sea front. Despite the lack of things to do (without spending cash on tours) it was a quaint little place and good to relax after the nonstop walking and madness of HCMC. But we booked a tour for the following day to explore the scenery beyond the strip. I got a message later to say Ole had arrived in the town after his first day starting to ride up the coast of Vietnam, so we met and went for dinner and chilled watching a film.
A lovely sunny start to the day and spent the morning having breakfast and chilling around the pool with Hannah and Ole. Just after lunch it was time to join our tour, which was nice as a couple of girls from my room had also booked on it with me. Ole and I clambered into the boot of the jeep and off we all went to our first stop, the Fairy Stream (Suoi Tien) sneakily there’s an additional charge to actually walk along the fairy stream, not too much but a bit annoying when you book a tour and they don’t mention there are additional charges. But the 6 of us went for a stroll along the picturesque stream with banked by red sand rock formations which seem to glow in the midday sun. Running out of time, we had to walk back to the jeep for the next stop, a brief photo opportunity at the Mui Ne harbour. It was cute with the local children wanting you to take their photos (not for cash, but they were also trying to seel random trinkets), the harbour was lined with fishing ‘vessels’ which look like huge washing up bowls. The white sand dunes were up next and, well that’s exactly what they are, sand dunes. We had a brief run up and down one of them but in the heat of the day that was all the energy used up, so we just sat about waiting to go to the next stop, the red sand dunes. Again, these are just sand dunes and don’t compare to the ones I saw in Dubai but a nice visit and photo opportunity, plenty of children trying to rent plastic sheets to go sand sledging on. The 6 of us went for a drink and food stop whilst waiting for our driver to take us back to the hostel but he was far too interested in gambling, eventually he admitted defeat (as he wasn’t winning his cash back) and took us back. That evening we managed to get a good group of about 10 people out for a meal, including Beatrice, Ole, Hannah and Alice (all of whom I travelled / ran into several times while travelling up Vietnam, I suppose that’s inevitable since we all seem to adopt the same route) which was a great laugh. The night took a messy turn when we headed to the hostel bar and ordered bottles of wine and embarked on several drinking games, in a drunken state we all headed up to a beach club for more drinks (like we needed it and we had to fight our way past the security guard at the hostel who was not impressed with us) and a game of limbo, naturally. Needless to say the bus to Dalat the following day would be interesting as who knows what time we rolled in.
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