Mui Ne, Binh Thuan, Vietnam
July 05, 2014
Mui Nei was an interesting one. At least compared to the Vietnam I had experienced for the past few weeks at least. It's on the backpacker route for some reason and we were told to head here for sports and such like but I'm a little unsure why. The main attraction here is that it has sand dunes. I've been to the Sahara before so seen a few of those and they don't exactly float my boat. I can go and see them at South Shields as well so I guess that says a lot really. As for the sports, I heard we could do dune boarding here so that made the dunes appeal a little bit more but it wasn't the kind of dune boarding I was hoping for. No board strapped to my feet but a small sheet of plastic that a kid hires out to you that you sit on and slide down. It should be called dune sledging instead. We could have done some surfing here but the waves were non existent and kite boarding was also an option but you couldn't just rent the gear and have a go. You had to pay an extortionate amount for a lesson first. Mui Ne is also a Vietnamese haven for Russian holiday makers as well and you already know my thoughts on that so the less said the better.
That said and as always we still made the most of it and got ourselves out for the day to see what was what. First up was the red dunes. Indeed they were reddish in colour and definitely dunes. We hired a couple of boards from the local kids and they flung us down the biggest dune we could find. It was a good laugh but the ride was always over far too quickly before you were trudging back up through the foot burning sand. Half an hour later we were covered in orange dust and looking like we had both had a very dodgy spray tan. Time to move on.
Next up was the white dunes. A half an hours ride away and we were sliding the bike around in deep sand trying to actually reach the place. These dunes were actually quite impressive. Much higher than the red dunes and over a bigger area as well. They had some quad bikes to rent so we grabbed one for half an hour and went careering around the place. Occasionally biting off more than we could chew and getting stuck half way up some of the steeper taller dunes. It was a good laugh though and I wish we could have afforded to hire it for longer as I was starting to find my quad bike groove.
That my friends was pretty much Mui Ne. We went out for some food on the night amongst the Russian contingent and grabbed another bottle of Jim Beam to take back with us. I don't know why the Jim is so cheap in Nam but I'm not complaining. Nothing else to keep us here another night so tomorrow we will head off towards Saigon and see what happens.
