Summer Sand-sledding in Mue Ne

Vietnam Trip - Day Two

Tianne and I caught the 6:50am train to Phan Thiet this morning. As promised, the train moved at a snail's pace, and took over five hours to complete a four hour journey.

The train was an interesting way to travel. For starters, we were the only backpackers in a car filled with people from Ho Chi Minh City who were heading to the beach with their kids. It also provided a unique opportunity to see the countryside and how people live in a few different provinces (from the city to forests to farms). And, as always, a train trip means more photos for our resident train-fanatic, Patrick. Sorry -- didn't bring the cables with me so you'll have to wait until the end of May to see the pictures! The experience has also helped us decide that it might just be our last train trip in the country (unless we go the sleeper train route at some point later on). Definitely no more of these "milk run" trips!

So, we arrived in Phan Thiet about 12:30pm and grabbed a cab to Mue Ne, which is a beautiful and relatively new beach resort area located 22km east of Phan Thiet. We got the cabbie to drop us off at a travel agency because we hadn't figured out how we were going to leave Mue Ne and the train was going to take a very long time (including backtracking over some ground we'd already covered). I'm happy to report that we'll be able to make the 5.5 hour trip to Nha Trang (the next beach resort town we're staying at) by bus for just US$5. Sweet!

Then we had to figure out where to stay. Tianne's unofficial strategy has been to find the newest hotel in town, which offer rooms at a discounted rate until they become known. And it worked for the second time in a row. We're staying right in the centre of the strip in Mue Ne at the Tien Dat Resort, which is about a year old. We have a beautiful second floor room with a balcony overlooking the pool and the ocean. All of this for under US$24 each per night. We had considered staying at a cheaper place, but figured this would be a good time to splurge as the same room in Nha Trang would cost at least three times as much! We expect to stay in lesser accomodations in Nha Trang, probably a five minute walk to the beach... unless, of course, Tianne works her magic finds us another brand new hotel with discounted rates!

We had a delicious (and dirt cheap) lunch at the backpacker restaurant across the street. Then we headed out on a 3.5 hour tour (the two of us with a jeep and driver) to see some of the major sites in the area. We started off at the Fairy Spring (Suoi Tien), which is really a patch of dunes with interesting sand and rock formations. We had some self-appointed tour guides for this journey (a couple of local boys) but they made the barefoot walk through the stream very entertaining.

We made a very brief stop (read: photo op) at a nearby fishing village, and then headed out the enormous sand dunes to the north. There was a fair bit of off-roading involved in getting us to the white sand dunes and oasis. It was a bit strange to see... it felt like we were standing in the Sahara desert instead of Vietnam! We didn't realize that we were supposed to pick up our sand sleds (crazy carpets) before stumbling up the dunes. Fortunately, we met up with a couple of travellers who were happy to lend us their sled for the mere entertainment of watching us give it a try. For some reason, I figured the sand would move quickly. It didn't. Lots of time to take funny photos on the way down.

After a couple more stops at other sand dunes, we headed back to the hotel. We were both pretty wiped, but decided to head out for dinner. Back to the backpacker restaurant across the street for some mango shakes, crab soup, seafood soup, and red snapper with lemon grass and chili. This, along with a big bottle of water and Tianne's dessert, came out to about CDN$7.

We have decided to stay on in Mue Ne for an extra night so we can really get a chance to kick back and enjoy the resort a bit. The current plan is to leave Mue Ne at around noon on Thursday (local time) to head to Nha Trang. We'll spend 1-2 days in Nha Trang before moving on to Hoi An.