WORST BUS JOURNEY EVER. FACT! It was a tiny little bus, with zero leg room, especially as I (Charlie) was seated over a wheel arch. So after 4 hours of sitting cross legged (on some outrageously bumpy roads) we arrived, very grumpy (Charlie) in Mui Ne. Our spirits were worsened futher in searching for a hotel room, as we decided we would try and scope the Lonely Planet's "pick". After about a km of walking in the baking heat and not yet reaching it, we decided to turn round and get a taxi back to where we started, and went to the first affordable nice looking hotel we could see. Done.

Then came the rain (torrential). And the bugs (hoards of ants - some coming from my bag! -and some mozzies). Starving, we braved the rain across the road for some food, a very affordable canteen style meal, which Tom very much enjoyed, I however must have picked the wrong thing, it was the worst meal of the trip. Back the the room. More mozzies. (This was a bit a low point and I had a bit of an "I want to go home moment"- dont worry it's gone now!) So back out into the rain to get mosquito oils and insecticide spray. I think this was the turning point, as after we sprayed the room we went for a wander and it started to brighten up. We found a cool beach bar spot, called Pogo, for a coffee and few games of pool.

Back to the room. Greeted by about 40(!) dead mosquitos! (YAY! Charlie:1 Mozzies:0) Feeling very triumphant we went out for dinner. Part of the way down the ridiculously long strip that is Mui Ne, we found a line of very basic, open air seafood restaurants. But their selections of fresh (mostly still live) fish and seafood was amazing! So we picked one of these, based on price per kilo, and price of beer, as I'm pretty sure there's only one way to BBQ seafood! It was still pretty early, and we were going to sit and have a drink before we ordered, a perfectly ordinary thing to do right?...well trying to convey this to the waitress was literally impossible. She wouldn't leave the table to get the beers until we had ordered food, and she just stared dumbfounded sucking her lollipop as we closed the menus saying "no food". Getting so frustrated we got to leave, but thankfully someone else came over and helped us out. (Got evils off lollipop woman for the rest of the evening!) Well i'm very glad we stayed, as it was one of the best meals either of us have ever had! Never before have we had food so fresh! It was just such a great experience going up to the tanks and bowls, pointing (first at a very plump looking red snapper, some clams and some prawns), getting everything weighed and priced up, (watching mr snapper's first and last flight, as he was tossed high into the air...) before seeing it go on the barbie. And it all tasted incredible! Very satisfied we wandered the 30mins back along the strip and stopped off at pogo for a couple of beers and more pool.

The next day Tom had checked the forcasts and today was going to be windurfing (beach for Charlie) day. So armed with books and towels and suncream we went off along the strip to try and find the Windsurfing rental place, Jibes. It was only at this point that we realised quite how stupidly long the strip was. It was about an hours walk until we found it, in a really busy, great looking part of town, clearly we were not staying in the main town. Tom went into Jibes, and "umm-ed" and "ahh-ed" at the wind for a while, then decided it wasn't windy enough and hoped it would pick up in the afternoon. He then found the Jibes shop and started salivating over all the Starboard (windsurf brand) merchandise, finally deciding that a long sleeved (tribal print?!?) rash vest was a necessity. So having blown his part of today's budget out the window we went next door in search of a cheap lunch. We got it. 2 fruit shakes, a plate of chicken noodles, a massive fresh fruit platter and a big bottle of water for about £3.

Following lunch we took a wonder down the beach to assess the wind. There was a few kite surfers out and it was starting to freshen so we ended up back at Jibes waiting to see if anyone was headed out. There was one Japanese chap that promply launched and promptly got munched by the shore break. Tom waited untill a guy came in fully planing on a 7.5 before deciding it might be ok to head out. Kit rented he jumped into the water and the wind promptly dropped! I flopped around for a bit but wasn't really getting anywhere so decided to come in and not waste any more money on rental. The board was really nice though, new Starboard Futura very clever design scooping volume out of the middle of the deck and putting it up on the nose makes tacking really easy!

We walked home along the beach and back to the guest house. The evening we ended up trying this restaurant opposite Jibes, it wasn't on the beach front but it was on the roof of a building and really nicely decorated. It was definitly the nicest restaurant we'd eaten in yet and we kind of fell in love with the place. Tom had some stir fried snapper and Charlie had some grilled Prawns. Both super tasty, but not quite the same experience and the previous night. Tom wasn't feeling too well though (probably dehydrated) so we got a taxi back shortly after and had an early night.

The next day we had decided we were going to rent a scooter and hit some of the sights nearby. Following a breakfast of yogurt and bananas in the room we headed outside to go track down a scooter. Promptly got acosted by a chap we'd spoken to the night before and struck a deal on a pretty sweet looking automatic scooter. Tom took a quick test drive to check he could drive it and we were off! Quick stop off for petrol on the way out of town and then we cruised over to the White sand dunes. These are about 25km out of town and the ride was really nice along the sea front and then inland. Motorbike really is the way to see Vietnam and we both really enjoyed the trip. We ended up missing the turning to the dunes but found it eventually after getting directions at a petrol station and following a German couple.

The white dunes were just that. A massive area of sand dunes. It as pretty cool, but walking a hard going, due to the heat, the wind blowing sand at you and the fact the the sand up hills just slips and slides, leaving you basically doing 2 steps forward, one step back. I think that quad bikes might have been a better way to see the dunes, but at $8 for 20mins we settled for walking. Surprisingly we weren't overly harassed by kids trying to rent us plastic sheets for sliding down, neither of us really felt like being covered in hot sand for the rest of the day, so gave it a miss.

We went back towards Mui Ne, stopping of at the Red dunes (more orange...but basically red yes). Having been lead to belive that these were nowhere near as impressive as the white dunes, I was pleasantly surprised. I think I actuall thought they were prettier, the current wwindswept shapes were better and the colour contrasts of the orange against the blue sky and th green trees was gorgeous. Hungry, we wennt back to Mui Ne, to the "fastfood" canteen we'd been to on the first day (Tom, convinced me that if I picked something else it would be better.) He was right, I had this pretty good tofu (stuffed with meat! good job i'm not veggie!) dish and tom had pork ribs; again for supercheap. :)

We got back on the bike for our last sightseeing stop, the Fairy Stream. We weren't really expecting much...but it's one of my faourite places in Vietnam I think, and the best part of a really great day. You basically show up at this muddy, dirty looking stream and you have to wade through it...but then palm trees appear, sandy banks get cleaner and steeper, and then you turn a corner and you're in a beautiful canyon. It's hard to describe and I really hope the photos do it justice. One wall of the canyon was really high, made up of red sand, yellow sand and toward the bottom had white rock formations that almost looked like stalagmites. Wandering long the whole way took about an hour, showing a whole array of different colours of sand and mud, white, gray, yellow, orange, deep terracotta red and black and finally ended up with a little waterfall at the end. I (Charlie) also dropped my flipflop in the fast moving stream, but a fairy (Tom) brought it back for me.

We had a little fuel left in the scooter and an hour or so until it had to be back so we went up to the bypass which is a dual carridgeway that seems to be permanently empty. Tom gave Charlie the scooter to have a try and she zipped up and down the strip for a little bit getting the feel for it. Following that we burned back into town and Tom had a sad moment having to hand the scooter back.

That evening we ended up back at the same place as the first night. We shared some bbq'd crabs but they were kind of wasted on us since we didn't really know how to open the shell and there really didn't seem to be much meat on them, only guts and weird green juice! Pretty tasty though and then had another snapper, was quite disapointed as this snapper was no where near as tasty as the last and actually seemed quite fatty. We rounded the night off with a beer under the moonlight at pogo.

Next day we had a bit of a lye in before ambling along the beach. Ended up at the restaurant next to Jibes and hung around there for a few hours. Charlie had her first coconut of the trip while Tom had a beer. We walked up the beach and found a shady spot for Tom while Charlie sunbathed. Seems the Doxy (anti malarials) are making Tom far more sensitive to the sun, doesn't seem to have as much effect on Charlie though, if anything it's made her less sensitive than usual.)

That evening we returned to the really nice restaurant we had eaten in on the second night. We splurged and ordered Tiger Prawns and (another!) bbq'ed red snapper! We really should have learnt our lesson abouut going back to restaurants, as the experience is rarely ever as good and we were pretty disappointed. The snapper was good, but the "BBQ Tiger PrawnS" actually turned out to be just the one prawn, that really didn't have much meat on and tasted pretty bland. Costing $8, we were miffed to say the least. So we went somewhere else for dessert and had some amazing banana pancakes outside, under the full moon, to cheers us up!

Mue Ne has been really nice and it'll be sad to leave, although they do eat turtles here, which is distressing Charlie a little. Off to the metropolis that is HCMC in the morning...and a little apprehensive...