Mui ne
After a rather bumpy and uncomfortable journey from Dalat we were more than pleased to finally arrive in Mui ne. Luckily the bus driver dropped us just a short walk from the hostel. Although it must be said that it was not quite the front door service that many of the Vietnamese locals on board received. Mui ne consisted of numerous resorts, restaurants and some shops. It was quite a long strip that was parallel to the sea. Our hostel was again pretty decent with a pool and bar area alongside it.

That evening, Jake (who we had picked up in Dalat) had found us somewhere good for dinner. We had been successful in Dalat using trip advisor to choose restaurants so Jake wanted to be the lead on this one. We walked a good km up the strip to find a bbq out the front of the restaurant and it was filled with quite a few locals. I branched out and decided to try the seafood platter which was really flavoursome from the sauces used and the fish was fresh.

The next day we got up at 4am to go on the sunrise sand dune tour. It was easier than expected to get up and we had quite a large group leaving together from the hostel. They managed to squeeze 8 of us into a jeep, we 3 in the boot. It was pitch black and pretty chilly as we sped along out of Mui ne. We saw many other jeeps heading the same way as us presumably to the same viewpoint.

Once we arrived we were anxious to get to the top of the dunes as the sun was already coming up. We were asked to pay for a quad bike to get to the top which seemed our only option as the walk would have been too long to reach the top in time. The quad bikes were pretty scary, you felt like you were going to be thrown off the back. We reached the top and there were many tourists taking pictures of the sunrise. It was definitely worth the journey as the views were incredible and changing constantly as the sun crept up. Jake paid for a mat to go down the dunes on but it looked like a huge amount of effort getting back up.

The next stop was the red dunes. The sand was dark orange and we went to take pictures of the views over the city. We bonded with the others in our group as we were all so hungry by this point having been promised free breakfast. The group we chatted to was made up of a brother and sister, a uni friend, a girl they had met in Thailand and that girls’ uni friend. It was a nice compilation of a group.

The rest of the tour involved a quick stop at a fishing village that was too smelly to stay very long and the ‘fairy stream’ which was a stream we walked down toward a waterfall. Red and white road lined one side of the stream and the sand was soft as we walked through the stream. It made for quite a unique experience. We got back to the hostel at 8.15am by which time we were all very ready for breakfast.