A little slice of Heaven

Alright I’m back, and not really sure how I feel about the “lucky you” comment from Will but oh well. I thought that since beaches and my thing and scuba is Will’s that I would be the perfect person to write about Mui Ne. So as Will said we took a short train from Nha Trang to Mui Ne and of course that morning I woke up not feeling quite right. It was the first time I’d actually felt pretty sick on this whole trip. I ended up sleeping the whole train ride with a horrible stomach ache. When we arrived at our hotel in Mui Ne I was trying my hardest to feel better because we were at the beach but it just wasn’t working. After a quick dinner I went back to sleep to try and get rid of this stomach bug. Poor Will seemed so annoyed with me because he really wasn’t in the mood to take care of someone after our long day of traveling.

The next morning I woke up and felt a lot better but still a little weird so we headed to breakfast and then the beach. This place was absolutely beautiful. From the beach you looked out at amazing blue waters and to the left you saw tons of fishing boats and then to the right tons of kite boarders and wind surfers. Supposedly Mui Ne is the best place in Vietnam is for these kinds of water sports. As many of you know I could have laid on that beach all day, completely happy, but Will, like many other boys, was getting stir crazy and wanted to do an activity. We rented bikes and rode into town to have some lunch, which I can’t remember the last time I got on a bike, so I was a bit wobbly at first but then fine. After lunch Will was still determined to keep me away from the beach so we decided that we were going to go about 15km out of town and see the famous sand dunes. Thinking about riding my bike that far made me nauseous so Will had the, what he thought was genius, idea for us to rent a motorbike and have him drive us there. Alright as many of you have seen the videos about how people drive around here I shot the idea down immediately. I was in NO mood to be killed or seriously injured. I tried to reason with Will that maybe we could just hire two guys to drive us there, but at this point his mind was made and there was no turning back. I debated and debated (argued and argued) about how I thought it was a horrible idea, but in the end Will assured me that it would be fine. He kept claiming that he and Brandon rented motorbikes in San Miguel and that he knew what he was doing. So finally, I bravely hopped on the back of the motorbike and prayed for my safety.

Views of the beach from the moto

When we got on I could tell that Will seemed a little uneasy with this thing. He was looking around like he had no idea how to drive it and that’s when I asked again, “are you sure you’ve done this before” and then he confessed, “actually no”. Annoyed at this point but committed I dealt with it and held on for my life when we first took off and almost tumped over. Will gained control but the problem now was we were headed in the absolute wrong direction and we were both pretty nervous about turning around. I sat on the back completely mad at myself for being so dumb and going along with Will’s plan. We finally made it down a little ways and Will was ready to turn around. I thought no way am I going to be on this when he crashes, so I jumped off and walked across the street. He tried to turn and it was one of the most humorous things I’ve seen. He took a huge turn and still didn’t make it around all of the way. It was actually pretty great to watch. He made it back over to me, without getting hit by any on coming traffic, and we were off again to the sand dunes. Of course the only directions we knew were to go straight towards the end of the beach, so that’s where we headed. On our way there these cute little boys on a motorbike, with their dad/older brother/some guy, started talking to us and they ended up leading us to the sand dunes. Our near death/injury experience happened on our first main turn. We were following the little kids, and I mean all of the motorbikes here make turning look SO easy. So Will, following everyone else, started to make the turn but was going way to fast and we started losing control and were headed right for this sidewalk and rocks and we just went flying into it. We really are so lucky that nothing happened to us or the rented motorbike. Will’s face after this happened was priceless. He looked back at me like he was shocked we weren’t hurt. I gave him a punch in the back and told him to please not kill me and then we were off again. The little boys had slowed down a bit for us to catch up and their faces were in shock as well. They were both giggling and saying that they were worried about us. Then they started coaching Will on how to drive the thing. Slow on the turns the kept saying and our next two turns we took it so slow we’re lucky we didn’t stall out.

We got the dunes and the little boys jumped out with these long pieces of plastic that they explained were for sand sledding. Looking up on the mountains of dunes and realizing I was in flip-flops, shorts, and a tank top, I immediately said I wasn’t sledding. Will on the other hand was very eager to try it out, so we trekked to the top with 3 little boys around the age of 11. You could tell we were getting some looks right and left since we were the only white people around and the only people over about 15 heading to the top. There were so many kids on these things. The dunes stretched for miles and there were tons of kids playing all over them. It was like their parents just drop them off there and pick them up a few hours later. What a great babysitter. Anyway we got to the top and one of the boys demonstrated how to use the sled. They had to dig in the sand and find some wet sand to put on the sled to weigh it down for speed. I couldn’t help but laugh watching these little guys dig. Sand was flying all around and they looked like little dogs trying to dig up its bone.

After a demonstration it was Will’s turn and watching this made me laugh as well. Will didn’t really fit on their sled and all three of them had to push him to make him go. It was great!!! He loved it of course and trekked even higher to another point where he tried it again. We then headed back down and this was when they wanted to be paid. We realized then that you can’t even go and play with some kids here, it’s all about them getting money. As Will handed them each a little bit they kept asking for more and it just completely broke my heart. I would have given them everything we had if I had been holding the money. They finally took what he offered and it was back on the motorbike. We made it home alive, Will ended up being a good driver, and at this point we had used up our whole day.

The next morning I got to relax some more on the beach before heading to Saigon. The bus ride was about 4 ½ hours which wasn’t that bad. We’re here in Saigon now and just got home from walking around all day. We’re pretty beat and we’re out of here again tomorrow morning to Cambodia. I’m sure Will has some stuff to say about today and if not then you’ll be hearing from us in Cambodia.