Mui Ne

With only a month left in Saigon, the girl and I decoded to have more more weekend trip away.

We decided to go to Mui Ne, a beach town, 4 hours from HCMC. For some reason, we had it in our heads that Mui Ne was a 6-hour bus ride. So we booked our bus for 11pm on Friday night, expecting to arrive around 5/6 am. But instead we arrived at 3 in the morning… what were we supposed to do? The reception was closed and didn’t open until 6am, even then, we weren’t allowed to check-in until noon! Our only option was to camp out beside the hostel’s pool. Thank god it was warm, although I was so glad that I brought a towel when it started to get chilly around 5 am.

At 4am, everybody who was out clubbing came back. A group of French people decided to stay out drunkenly chatting for what seemed like hours. Could they not see us, with all of our bags, trying to sleep on the already uncomfortable deck chairs? About half an hour later, the pool guy decided to start his duties which involved turning on the pool lights and sprinkling out chlorine powder and cleaning the pool. We nearly choked in our sleep! By the time he was finished, the sun was coming up, but I managed to squeeze in a couple of hours sleep before waking up at 7:30.

I went to the reception to ask about tours and other info. The girls woke up within the hour. It was Aoife’s birthday so we decided to chill at the pool and make use of the hostel’s cheap bar and Happy Hour. The hostel organised a Sand Dune Tour which left at 1:30. We got ready and headed to Joe’s Bar for lunch. Unfortunately, the service was taking a while, so we had to change our order to go and run to get our Jeep car for the tour.

We had an old, yellow jeep that drove the four of us and a German couple. Our first stop was the Fairy Stream. It was a stream of water flowing through orange rock, giving the water a bright copper colour. We walked up the stream, looking at different rock formations. It was a strange add-on to the tour, but like Aoife said, I had never seen anything like it, so it was cool.

It was pretty hot and windy, which made the flying sand sting your face and stick to your skin. We were allowed 40 minutes to walk around the Fairy Stream, then we were on our way t the White Sand Dunes. It was quite a drive away, but we got to stop off at a Fishing Village for 15 minutes on the way.

Once at the White Sand Dunes, we were immediately surrounded by men rushing to sell places to fill up their dune buggies. It ended up costing us 100k each, which is fine, but we weren’t told about this extra cost. Of course, there was the option of walking up the dunes, but it was windy and very warm so the car ride up seemed the best option. Plus, it was an exciting ride as the driver drove super-fast over the dunes.

At the top, the view was beautiful, but it was so windy! Sand was flying everywhere, making it impossible to see if you didn’t have sunglasses. There was also the option to slide down the steep dunes on a board, but it looked plain dangerous and messy, so we just watched from the side. Around 40 minutes later, and we were back in the car to drive back to town to see the Red Sand Dunes. It was around 5pm at this point and the sun was starting to set. Again it was nice views, but the clouds were blocking the sun and the sand was getting annoying so we headed back. It was a great tour and only 120k each!

At the hostel we all got showered to rid ourselves of all of the sand and had a wee np before the night’s celebrations. The hostel had a Full Moon Party theme, so we all dressed up and put on glitter and illuminous paint on our faces. We did rounds of 25k cocktails and shots, then walked down to the Dragon Beach Lounge/Bar on the beach. It was great, we were dancing a lot. A guy was trying to fire into Aoife by dancing with her. At one point he was dancing, getting lower and lower until eventually he hit the floor, and we all noticed he was doing the splits! It was so funny and unexpected, but I think we scared him off by laughing at him… oops.

We headed back around 2:30, washed off our glitter and went straight to bed. We were staying at the Mui Ne Backpacker Village. It was £2 a night and the first hostel that I’ve stayed in that didn’t have bunkbeds!

In the morning, we had a juice at the hostel. Our bus was a 13:00 so we decided to go to Hill’s Burgeria and Bar for a burger. I got the pulled pork burger, it was great! The coconut blender was amazing! We took her time and chilled at the pool in the hostel, waiting for our bus. It was a sleeper bus, and the four of us were at the back of the bus sharing the back row. It was pretty warm and we were all pretty close. Next time I will try to choose a single seat so that I have my own space. Four hours later we were back in District 1, and we had our usual post-trip Sancho’s Burrito and Margarita! Perfect ending as always!

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