As I explained in our last blog, we had arranged to meet our friends Pat and Paul in Mui Ne for the new year and when getting on our bus from Nha Trang to here there thy were on our bus, so for the next few days we were now a fivesome again! Mui Ne is a small beach village four hours south of Nha Trang, we decided to come here on the recomendation of other travellers who said that it was a far nicer beach than most other places in Vietnam and it has a nice village feel to it rather than a town or a city. Upon arriving our first task was to find accommodation, so me and the boys set off to find some while Lau and Sandra sat and drank beer whilst guarding our bags. Mui Ne is basically one road stretching all along the beach which runs for about 11km, and scattered along this road is where all the accommodation, shops and resturants are, so after an hour of searching we returned with 2 options, one was to rent a small house on the beach front for $60 a night that would sleep all five of us, or the other option was to sleep in a lobby area of a hotel for $5 each a night, but this wasnt a normal lobby area, it was surrounded by glass and was the passage way for all the other rooms so we would have no security or no privacy but we did have a bed. So of course being the tight travellers we are, we went for the the second option, all five of us sleeping in a hotel lobby area, but there was plus points too... it was right on the beach, we had a pool and free wifi so it wasnt all bad! That night we decided to go to a nice seafood resturant opposite our hotel where we took our own achohol, we brought two bottles of rum for less than a dollar each and proceded to drink them whilst we all ate, Laura had a fresh bbq snapper and I had snapper with rice. After the food we were all pretty drunk so headed to a party on the beach at a really cool bar, as it was Tet eve there was all sorts of celebrations going on with children in Chinese dragon costumes dancing round and celebrating, it was only about 5 minutes before I had the dragon head on and was dancing round like a fool! After dancing round for a bit and enjoying the party, we headed to the beach and sat round the beach fire where Laura got hit on by a Lezza... haha!!

The following day was valentines day so we decided to spend the day lazing on the beach doing nothing but relaxing eating and drinking. We didnt know until we got here that Mui Ne is a very popular destination for people from all over the world to come who are in to kite surfing, and we can see why... it is'nt really windy in Mui Ne, but because of how the bay is positioned along the ocean, it really whips up a good wind for the kite surfers, so for almost all day the ocean is full with hundreds of these adreneline junkies doing all sorts of flips and tricks, so it's really entertaining to watch whilst catching some rays. At night we again, after food brought our own rum and headed to a beach party to celebrate valentines day!

On our third day we decided we wanted to go to the white sand dunes which were around 30km away, and after getting prices for a taxi, it actually worked out cheaper to go on a half day tour which included going to both the red and white sand dunes, the floating fishing village, a fairy river and waterfall and then to a canyon. So all five of us got in the jeep and headed to the fairy river which was basically a really shallow sandy river which you walked up for around 30mins until we reached a quite lame waterfall, the walk in the river was really nice actually with huge sand dune to one side and jungle on the other but it was so damn hot we just wanted to get back to the jeep. We then went to the fishing village which entailed the driver stopping the jeep on the side of the road next to the fishing boats that were floating in the sea and us taking a photo, (great trip so far), then off to the canyon which looked like it had been bug out by a JCB. Eventually we got to where we wanted to go to, the white sand dunes, and they were really nice. It was weird to see because there is a huge area of pristinley white sand dunes next to a really blue lake in the middle of nowhere. The thing to do here is to rent a sheet of plastic and slide down the dunes, so we gave our 10000 dong for our plastic and trekked on the scorching sand to the top, but it was a massive anti-climax! We jumped on thinking we would go flying down, but we actually just sank on the sand! After about 10 minutes of sand in our face and sinking in the sand we headed back to the jeep where our driver took us home via the even lamer red sand dunes. After another night of drinking, the following day we checked out as me, Lau and Sandra were continuing our journey south to Saigon and Paul and Pat were heading back north for a few days to Nha Trang, but it was here at checking out the drama happened. We had seen another couple two days previous trying to check out and being ripped off by the hotels exchange rate, so when we checked out, we worked out exactly how much it should be (accoring to the local exchange rate) and gave it to the guy at reception. He first tried to charge us too much for the room then after a small argument we came to an agreement on the price in dollars, he then counted what we had given him in dong and wanted more because of them wanted to charge more than the banks exchange rate. So we told him he was wrong and we could prove that the exchange rate we had payed was correct with the bank on the corner, we argued some more and decided to just walk away and leave him the money on the desk... it was at this point he came flying across reception at us trying to stab us with a sharp metal spike (it was one of those spikes that you put receips or postet notes on)! So the argument went up a notch at this point... after another 10 minutes or so of arguing we agreed on a price and walked away with our lives still intact! We spent the next few hours on the beach before saying goodbye to Pat and Paul who we had been with for 4 weeks and heading south to Saigon! x