Thursday 17th May

We had another early morning, which Stu found hard considering he had no sleep! We had breakfast and waited to be picked up for our first bus in Vietnam. We have heard stories how bad the buses can be sometimes so we decided to by point to point tickets rather than an open tour ticket, a little more expensive but we have more flexibility in choosing who we go with. Vietnam doesn't seem to be short of travel agents that all offer similar trips at varying prices. You either have to go by word of mouth from other travellers or hope you pick a decent company!

Our bus was actually a sleeper bus, which seemed odd as it was only a 4 hour journey but this meant it was more comfy to sleep! These are 'seats' are basically sunbeds where you can adjust the height of the head. We had the back row of 5 seats; I luckily had a spare seat next to me so I sprawled out across two. The seats are wide enough but are comfy enough to lie down. We slept most of the way and woke up in the sunny beach town of Mui Ne.

Mui Ne is basically one street with various hotels one side looking over the water and restaurants the other side. We had a short walk to our hostel as we spotted it on the way in; we were welcomed by the owner John and shown to our dorm room. The hostel was really nice, they had a pool, tiny, but big enough to float and cool down. You can carry on walking through and you at the beach front where the hostel had sun beds to sit and relax. Very nice!

It was lunch time and we had a wonder to find some food, the food in Vietnam is not the best in the world. They have a lot of noodles, or as the locals say pho. For Stu this is amazing, but for not a big fan of spaghetti and noodles it's a pain. I'm already missing the food in Cambodia!

We went back to the hostel and booked the trip for the sand dunes for tomorrow and decided to stay an extra night and get the bus the day after.

We decided to cool down in the pool, where it seems to be the 'common room' for the other guests and we got talking.

We got showered and dressed and found somewhere else to eat before settling in for the night.

Friday 18th May

We had a lie in, as our tour started at 2pm and we laid around the pool for a bit before getting some lunch at the budget eatery next door. The food was amazing! I happily munched on BBQ chicken, onion and tomato! Very Cambodian! So I was happy!

We returned to the hostel and waited for our pick up which was an old USA jeep that you see in the movies! It was awesome and bumpy drive to our first stop, fairy stream. Which does not have any fairies, which is kind of disappointing, we had to take our shoes off and we had a 20 minute walk upstream. It was a very shallow stream; the river bottom was a sandy red with some deeper parts, as Stu found out!!

We returned to the jeep and drove to the further white sand dunes. It was quite warm, and the sand was hot! Luckily a cool breeze had blown the darkening clouds over the sun and everything cool down instantly. I didn't realise how windy it is on top of the sand dunes, which thinking about it now is stupid in thinking it wouldn't be! I made the fatal error of sitting down to take a sip of water which resulted in a face of sand, so I made the worse error possible, turning my back to the wind. When I realised my mistake, it was too late, I had half the sand dune down my trousers. Not impressed. After that I didn't sit down again! The sand was lovely white sand you would find in the pictures next to the sea, yet the sea was a couple of miles in front of us. Stu rented a plastic sheet to slide down the dunes, which didn't work at all. It was peaceful as we were the first tour group of the day to reach the top, and then came the others. A group of lads had hired quad bikes and were whizzing them round all over the dunes. Then the girls came…! One nearly ran us over, and then proceeded to get stuck and wheel spin themselves deeper in the sane. Which I found amusing considering their driving skills were much to debate over.

We escaped before they returned for round 2, and headed back to the jeep to go to the red sand dunes, which says it on the tin. These sand dunes were red sand! There were more kids here trying to sell plastic sheets, before the jeep stopped one opened my door while moving and shoving said plastic sheet in my face. The Vietnamese do not take no for an answer and will ask you again and again, hoping to wear you down.

We walked up to the dunes which was a lot harder than the other ones, and less windy so I risked sitting down while Stu and the others had a race down the hill!

We jumped back in the jeep and headed home to de-sand and grab some dinner as we were both hungry! We went back to where we went for lunch and I had the same BBQ chicken!! It was good!

We hang around the pool and headed towards a bar and got chatting to a few people before going home, the stupid way across the beach. The sea pretty much comes right up to the sea wall so we ended up clambering over in the dark; we ended up taking a short cut through one of the hotels and returning to the main road!

Saturday 19th May

We had a lazy day and I chilled out on a sun lounger blog updating (which I am very behind I know!!) while Stu chilled in the pool!

We went to our usual haunt for food; I did push the boat out and tried something new, but secretly wishing I had my BBQ chicken!

We had to move rooms, which was fine and we got out the essentials and got ourselves ready for our bus to Nha Trang tomorrow.

We went for a beer next door and listened to some live music, I found it amusing that the guy could bare string a correct sentence in English, yet when he sang, it was perfect!!