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Ok, a recount of Mui Ne and Monkey Island and everything between.
Right, so last Friday night I took a bus up to Mui Ne, for the weekend. It was without doubt the best fun I've had in Vietnam so far. We hired motorbikes and just cruised along the coast for 2 days...and got pretty bad sunburn. It was my first time ever on a motorbike - yippee! I was a bit shaky at first, but I thought I went pretty dang good.
I loved it so much that I plan on hiring a motorbike once I have finished my course, to ride around Saigon. I think I've got a much better idea of how traffic works here now. At first, it looks like total chaos, bikes everywhere, people ignoring the lights, dodging in and out of buses, riding on the wrong side of the road and the footpath, making seemingly suicidal mavourves, and so on. But after a while, you kinda see there is a sort of pattern to it. Usually the bigger and fast vehicles have right of way, but it seems to me that the traffic here most closely resembles a crowded pedestrian footpath.
Anyway, back to Mui Ne. Right, so we hired our bikes (me, Brendo, Jeene (a Frenchy) and Clement (an Austrian who speaks like a Frenchy), and rode to the fishing village, which was a hell of a lot more amazing then I was anticipating. Fishing junks everywhere, hundreds of them. Then we rode down closer to the boats, through some back streets to the shore. Within less than five minutes of stopping there, a group of like 15 kids appeared out of seemingly nowhere and crowded around us. So we took some pics and took off.
So about 15 minutes later we were cruising along the road in our little convoy of mopeds, and we were ambushed by another group of kids! This time though, they actually ran out onto the road, to try and stop us. There were at least 20 of them, all around 10 years old. I had no idea what the hell was going on, so I kept on riding. But the guys behind me got surrounded, with kids jumping on their bikes. Turns out that they were 'tour-guides', who just wanted to take us riding down the sand dunes. So we all pulled over. It made for a pretty funny situation - each of us had about 5 kids climbing over us and our bikes. One of the little buggars got onto my front wheel. And they were like 'you ride dunes, you ride now!'.
So we each picked a kid, and they led us off to the dunes.....which were right across the road. To be honest, I didn't really even notice them when I rode past. They just looked like big hills of red sand, coming off the road. But once you climb over them, you are in another world! I felt like I was in the Sahara desert or something, it was insane! We were almost the only ones there, which made it such a richer experience. Made for some great photos, too.
So after that, we went back to our bikes. Our plan was to go on to see the 'white sand dunes', which were supposed to be even better. They were a bit of a ride away though. The kids all wanted us to bring them along, 'pick me, pick me! Take me to the dunes!'. We had to pick only one each, though, so we brought along the ones that showed us the dunes.
The white dunes were about an hour's ride away. The road went along the coastline, and it was such a sunny and bright day, which made for an amazing ride. Although the wind was a pain in the ass, and kept blowing the helmet down the back of my head.
The white dunes were truely amazing, and suprisingly remote. The way there is threw someone's farm, and we had lunch there afterwards. We had a lot of fun there, and the scenery was breathtaking, as you can see by the pics. We rode the dunes with the kids, and even tried going down 4 at a time, which ended in us crashing halfway down and getting thrown off, and rolling about 20 times. It was very windy, too. I still have sand in my hair from it!
The ride back was much more pleasant. The sun wasn't as hot and the wind was at our backs. We passed the red dunes again, at about sunset, to drop off the kids. I was suprised to see that it was absolutely chockers with tourists! We got back to where we were staying after sunset, and went for dinner, then the Pogo bar for a few hours.
We saw off some random Swedish girls, who thought that they were gonna miss their flight back to Singapore, where they were studying, coz the bus was like an hour late. Then went riding to find some local spots, at like 2 in the morning. I was riding, Brendo was on the back. I think I nearly gave him a heart attack, haha. When he first got on and we started to go, I overbalanced, and went zigzagging across the road. He jumped off the back. After that though, it was a pretty smooth ride, but he was still a bit jumpy (hope I'm not embarrassing you too much, mate! I'm just thinking of how you reacted every time a bus came along --- or 2, overtaking and heading straight for us, haha).
So next day, we went riding in the opposite direction, to find some lighthouse, which we never ended up finding. Instead, we wound up riding through some small villages with narrow streets, they had such a great atmosphere, I wish I'd stopped to take pics. Then back up to the fishing village for lunch, and doing laps of the roundabout. Unfortunately, I was really tight for time, since I had to be back to Hai Yen (where we stayed) to be picked up by my bus, at 2pm. We had just ordered lunch, when I decided that I really had to leave. I was about ten to 2. So we had a rushed goodbye, and I zipped off on my bike. Turns out that is was a VERY good call. I actually overtook my bus on the way back. So I had to grab my bag and practically chuck the keys back to the staff, and just hailed down the bus with like a minute to spare.
Geeez Louise, that was a lot longer then I was going to write.... Monkey Island will have to wait for another time. I'm off for dinner.
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