On 24th March we headed out from Ho Chi Minh on the bus to Mui Ne, a small seaside town about a four hour ride away. We had a rest stop on the way and bought fruit and snacks. An elderly Chinese man was laughing his head off and taking photos at the toilets where customers are expected to remove their own shoes and put on the sandals provided to use the facilities. We've got used to it, and I try not to think about all the skin diseases we might catch from sharing sandals with complete strangers! Most of the time it makes for spotlessly clean toilets though.
Unusually, we hadn't booked any accommodation in Mui Ne, but as we were arriving about lunchtime, we didn't think there was much of a risk of having to camp on the beach. We went into the nearest resort when the bus stopped (which happened to be owned by the bus company) and got a room in their guest house across the street, $30 a night cheaper than staying in the resort and we could still use their pool and have access to the beach (what there was of a beach, from water's edge to wall was about a metre).
We spent two nights in Mui Ne, which is renowned for kite surfing. We didn't do any kite surfing, we were out of season but Liam did buy a kite out at the Red Sand Dunes which we're still carrying along.
The wi-fi at the resort wasn't working one day and when I went to reception to report the problem I got shrugged at and told 'yes it is a problem' and when I suggested that maybe they could re-set it by turning it off and on again - she just laughed. We're getting used to the giggling. And the non-smiling staff at the resort. We tried to make them smile, we really did. One day I nipped back to the room to get something and found the door wide open, turns out it was the cleaner, vacuuming the room next door, but using the electrical socket in our room, leaving the door (which opened onto the public pathway) wide open with all our belongings in there and letting all the mosquitos in. Great.
Unusually, we hadn't booked any accommodation in Mui Ne, but as we were arriving about lunchtime, we didn't think there was much of a risk of having to camp on the beach. We went into the nearest resort when the bus stopped (which happened to be owned by the bus company) and got a room in their guest house across the street, $30 a night cheaper than staying in the resort and we could still use their pool and have access to the beach (what there was of a beach, from water's edge to wall was about a metre).
We spent two nights in Mui Ne, which is renowned for kite surfing. We didn't do any kite surfing, we were out of season but Liam did buy a kite out at the Red Sand Dunes which we're still carrying along.
The wi-fi at the resort wasn't working one day and when I went to reception to report the problem I got shrugged at and told 'yes it is a problem' and when I suggested that maybe they could re-set it by turning it off and on again - she just laughed. We're getting used to the giggling. And the non-smiling staff at the resort. We tried to make them smile, we really did. One day I nipped back to the room to get something and found the door wide open, turns out it was the cleaner, vacuuming the room next door, but using the electrical socket in our room, leaving the door (which opened onto the public pathway) wide open with all our belongings in there and letting all the mosquitos in. Great.
On the second day we took a ride out to the White Sand Dunes and hired a couple of sledges from one of the small boys (they were more sheets of plastic really) and used them to ride down the Dunes. Cliff and Liam managed it many more times than I did (once) as I'd managed to come slightly unprepared, wearing a dress. Click here to see the video of the sledging . A couple of the older boys from the village followed us up to the top and 'helped' to push us down and then expected a tip for their trouble. Cliff gave them 50,000 dong, this is about £1.70 (about what you'd pay for lunch in Vietnam, so not a mean tip by any stretch). But they asked for more, which is a general trend here. We said we didn't have any more change, which was true.
Liam did a bit of kiting at the Red Sand Dunes and then it was onto the fishermen's village to see the catch being brought into shore.
The fishermen use small rounded bamboo basket boats which seem to hold at least four men as far as we could see. They appear to stem back to the time that France governed Vietnam. The French levied taxes on many things, including boats. Many poor villagers could not pay the tax imposed on their small boats so they invented a new type of boat called 'thuyen thung' to evade the tax because the thung (round basket) was not considered a boat.
On our last day, the resort restaurant staff upset us again by taking over an hour to serve us lunch when they knew we were getting the bus to De Lat at one o'clock. We sound like the hotel guests from hell, but we're really not hard to please. Honest. I chatted to an American guy on the morning we were leaving and he was saying how grouchy the hotel staff were here too (all these demanding westerners I expect ;) He works as cabin crew so knows a bit about customer service. He said he been up the road to a resort about to open and had stressed to the owner about the important of some smiling service :)
There wasn't really much there in Mui Ne, so we were quite pleased to be getting on our way. Although on the way out to the bus, an English guy who had just arrived said 'Oh you're not taking the bus up to Da Lat are you?' We were. Apparently the journey down the mountain can be a bit hairy, no worries we thought, we're going up!
No comments:
Post a Comment