Mui Ne & Nha Trang: Beaches of Southern Vietnam

After blitzing the sights and sounds of Saigon, we headed north to the beach towns of Mui Ne and Nha Trang for a few days. We took a 4 hour day bus from Saigon to the beach town of Mui Ne. We expected a lively and picturesque drive through farms and villages, like the ones we'd become accustomed to in Cambodia, but we were sadly mistaken. All of the small towns north of Saigon seemed to be invested in some sort of heavy industry, which was then funnelled back to the ports in Saigon via large cargo containers. It was a wasteland of massive cement, logging, and industrial machinery factories, and the mopeds and water buffalo we'd hoped to see were replaced with 18 wheelers hauling two containers each.

We arrived in Mui Ne late, and found a little bungalow near the beach. We met some other travellers and found a cheap dinner by the beach, before crashing for the night. The town threw us off at first since all of the restaurant and tourist advertisements are written in Vietnames and then in Russian. You would even hear the Vietnames waitstaff greeting people in Russian instead of English, while a Russian techno song would blare over the speakers in the bar next door. I've been travelling for almost 3 months now and have met ZERO Russians, but here in Mui Ne they came in droves of matching Adidas and Puma track suits, which must have come with speedos included.  We never really figured out the story with this, but it added a great quirkiness to the whole place.

We woke up and rushed to the beach. In true budget backpacker fashion, we stealthily snuck up to one of the posh beachside resorts (that we could never afford), and stole the cushions from their beach furniture to set up our own spot by the water. The beach was beautiful, and we swam for most of the morning, before going to rent a motorbike to explore some of the areas around the town.  There were some amazing things to see and it felt great to be back on a motorbike riding down the coast.

First we went to a place called the Fairy Stream, which is a tributary that runs about 3 kilometers from the beach back into the mainland. It has towering red and white sand dunes to the left and lush green jungle to the right. and you can walk down the middle of the stream ankle deep in water until you come to a waterfall at the end.









 

             






We hung out there for a while before hopping back on the bike and going to a little fishing village a few kilometers away. The village was incredible. In the harbour, hundreds of ancient looking fishing boats were moored in place and leathery Vietnamese men sat in their boats behind tarps and picked at their nets while chain smoking cheap cigarettes. The fisherman here also use these weird little half sphere vessels that look exactly like bowls. They weave big bowls out of bamboo leaves and then cover the bottoms with tar. They look absolutely useless, but the bottoms of the boats are always full of fish. The fishermen tie them to eachother, and they bob around in the harbour with oars hanging out like a sink full of dirty bowls after breakfast.

We had a great time walking around and snapping a few pictures before heading back out to the famous Mui Ne  red sand dunes. On the way we got a bit lost and stumbled upon a rocky beach with no tourists in sight. The winds whipped a lone kite-surfer back and forth across the water at ridiculously high speeds, and a gang of local kids hung out watching him. They pointed us in the right direction and sent us along with some tuber that looked like a radish but tasted like a fresh crisp apple.























Eventually we came to the sand dunes right as the sun was beginning to set. Vans full of older Russian tourists with the same sunset plan, pulled up and offloaded as well. The dunes were really cool, and were the closest thing to a desert that I'd ever seen. We hung out for a little while, Meliss promptly got sand blown into her eyes, and had a harder time enjoying the views, but we roamed around until the sun went down and the sand became cold.

We had a great ride back through the towns and went back and had a shower before heading out for a seaside seafood BBQ that we stumbled upon during the day. This ramshackle operation served us some of the best seafood we'd ever seen. They had bathtub sized tanks and buckets set up along the sidewalk full with at least 20 different species of sea life. Little sharks, soccer ball sized conk shells, 5 types of clams, 3 types of mussels, frogs, moray eels, crabs, lobsters, sea urchins, and at least 8 types of fish. All of the critters were still alive, and we were given a basket and told to fill it with anything we wanted, and then it would be barbequed for us on the spot. PETA would have thrown red paint all over us if they had seen us, but it was also one of the best meals of the trip. We had a feast of crab, scallops, and giant tiger prawns while sitting with our feet in the sand. It was a great way to end a great day.






















The next morning, we had a few hours left with the motorbike, so we packed up our bags and took a long drive out to another set of sand dunes. The drive was great, although we couldnt spend much time at the dunes because we had to catch an afternoon bus up the coast to a place called Nha Trang.  After a full morning of exploring the coast on motorbike we caught our bus and moved on. This second leg of the bus journey was much more scenic and we got in just after sunset and found a cheap room for the night. We went out for dinner the first night, and due to a minor mixup the restaurant gave us a bunch of free mojitos, and we decided to go out for the night. We met a group of Scottish travellers at a bar and had a rowdy late night roaming around the city.

That was followed by a lazy day, with a little bit of city exploring, followed by a much more entertaining day where we booked a boat tour around the islands in the area. We had heard that these were booze cruises, and we were kinda dreading being stuck on a little boat with drunk Aussie bros (there were plenty in Nha Trang). The full day tour cost 6 bucks and included snorkelling, a huge lunch, a visit to a floating village, as well as an afternoon on an islad beach, so we decided to give it a shot. To our surprise the boat was not full of bros, but instead had row upon row of older Chinese businessmen who just wanted to sing karaoke. This turned out to be the best part of the trip and they partied in their own way the entire time. Smoking cigarettes and stripping down to their underwear to jump in the water.  After lunch, the "captain" folded down the seats and made a dance floor in the middle of the little boat so that he and the rest of his crew could put on a little performance. They pulled a drumset made of old gas cans, and water jugs off the top of the boat and, wrangled a rusty old 3 string guitar out from the wheelhouse. Then the captain pulled out a microphone and they started singing Vietnamese show tunes. He easily convinced the Chinese guys to sing some of their favorites, and then talked me into singing Yellow Submarine with him (we didnt get past the chorus). The vid would take another 40 minutes to upload if i straightened it out, so here's the sideways version):

We had an awesome lunch and did some really cool snorkelling off of one of the islands.  We jumped off the boat and swam around all afternoon. It was a hilarious way to spend a day and it cost us nothing. The next day we had booked the night train to Hoi An, so we had to check out of our hostel early in the morning. We left our bags at the hostel, grabbed our books and spent the entire day on the beach. They have thatched cocunut leaf bungaloes 20 feet from the water with big cabana chairs, so we rented one for the full day for 2 bucks. We slept, read, and swam for a full 10 hours and then lugged our bags to the bus station for a real bumpy overnight bus to the 1000 year old trading port of Hoi An.

The beaches of Southern Vietnam gave us a reeeeeeally good beach fix, before continuing the the adventure into the north of Vietnam.