Viet Nam Part 2: Mui Ne!

Remember in my previous post when I mentioned we went to a travel agency? Yeah. We booked ourselves a tour to....Mui Ne!!! Yay! A few days before we left for this trip I was researching and I found out about Mui Ne's sand dunes! I know right? Who knew Viet Nam had sand dunes! And my Mom's all about the Sahara desert and shit so she got excited about it and booked us a tour. Now this wasn't originally in out itinerary so it wasn't included in our budget but whatevs I was REALLY excited for this! Sand dunes!!!

So right after our City tour which ended at about 5 something we went straight back to our hotel to rest, pack our things and eat. Our bus was going to pick us up at the travel agency at about 8:30. The trip to Binh Thuan province, where Mui Ne is located, took about 6 hours. We arrived at about 2AM. We were told that we were going to be dropped off at the hotel but we weren't so WTF. Apparently the hotel was a 5 minute walk from where we were dropped off which would've been fine except that it was 2AM and walking in an unfamiliar road was not exciting at all! I thought I was going to end up abducted by a psychotic surgeon and have my mouth stitched to someone's ass or something (Human Centipede)!

Sleeping bus. My Mom didn't like it but she dozed off before anyone else. Haha!

Made it to the hotel without getting my mouth stitched to other people's butt! Phew! The hotel was already closed; like I mentioned some hotels in Viet Nam close at night but all you gotta do is wake up the caretaker and you're good to go. It was weird though. We woke him up and he gave us our keys without asking for anything. Like a confirmation slip or something. Pano pala kung wala talaga kameng booking dun edi may free room na kame?

Min Hung Hotel. Took a quick shot when we finally found the hotel. 

To our surprise the room was pretty nice.  It was spacious as heck and clean! The bathroom was also very room! Went straight to sleep coz our tour guide would be picking us up at 6AM!

Bathroom was huge. You can't really see it in the photo but there was a huge space at the right side. Could go camping in there!

So we woke up late. Like 5:30AM late. Had no time to take a shower and do all my going out rituals.  When we went down our driver/tour guide and a 4x4 jeep was already waiting for us.

 

 It was a bright sunny day!

It was a sort of a long trip to the sand dunes. About less than an hour I think. Our driver took us first to the Fishing Village which was full of...fishermen and boats for...fishing. It didn't really interest us or anything so we didn't stay long there. 

Early morning chat.

I got it from my momma!

After that, we then headed back to the road. We were all getting excited and stuff since the view on the way was really pretty. Imagine this....lovely, lovely beach plus desert-ish scene combined!

The photos doesn't do the place justice.

We arrived at the sand dunes a little past 7AM. We were excited as shit! It was SO pretty!

There was little lake thing filled with waterlilies in the sand dunes area. I thought you could go boating or something coz there was a couple boating turns out it was only for a photoshoot!


I think you can also rent these motorbike thingies.


There was surprisingly no one in the place. Like maybe a couple of tourists. I love how quiet it was. Like we had the whole place to ourselves!

Funny story so since there were only three of us and we didn't have a tripod we obviously couldn't take a photo with the three of us. So my sister and I took turns on taking photos with Mama. While camwhoring and stuff two men arrived and saw us and one of them offered to take a photo of us....

It was really nice of him and he was also very hot so I took the opportunity to ask him if we could have a photo taken with him. HAHAHA! He was taken aback but granted my request. Haha!

Friends, I present to you baby boy # 3....

Not only is he very attractive, he is also French! Haha! I love me some French men! Haha! When we asked him where we came from he said: "France." but he pronounced it as "Francais" Gaaaaah! So cute! Oh but he lives in England. He is apparently staying in Saigon for a few months coz he has a project or something. Oo alam ko na ang buong life story nya by the time we separated. Haha! Anyway, forgot his name! Shux! Tapos the man he was with wasn't friendly as he was, he kept taking pictures lang while we chatted with his friend. We offered pa nga to take a photo of them two kaso sabi nung isa "No thank you" daw. Charot. We were thinking maybe they're boyfriends! Haha! Baka nagselos yung isa kasi nilalandi namen boyfriend nya. =))

Anyway, I wanted to go farther but it was getting really hot! So after spending a good 20 minutes basking on the sand dunes' we decided we've had enough and headed back to our driver. The thing with our driver is that, though he was super nice, he spoke very little English so he never really spoke much. He just smiled. We thought we were going back to our hotel but he took us next to....

The red sand dunes. 

 

The red sand felt finer than the white one!

Unlike in the white sand dines there were tons of people in red dunes.  Kids were running around and ithe aura was completely opposite from the white sand. People spent their time sliding down the sand hill thingy. There were kids renting out plastic thingies you can use to slide on the sand hills. They amazingly spoke good English! 

Funny moment. So we were used to everyone not being able to speak English so we were surprised to hear that these kids could speak well.

Kid: Hi! Do you want to slide down?

Mom: No thank you. You speak good English.

Kid: Yes. I go to school!

Haha! Nga naman!

I'd  love to go slide down the hills and stuff but it was already 8 something and it was already very hot! I didn't think it would be worth it since...like I said it was hot plus I didn't get to take a shower so I felt extra sticky.  So after taking photos we left. 

Again, we thought we were going back to the hotel but we had another stop...Fairy Stream! Basically the Fairy Stream is a creek that winds its way through the sand dunes. It was rather lovely. The water was really shallow and the ground was super soft; it was mus and (red) sand! Fun to walk with barefeet! I especially loved the colourful sand banks along the sides. So pretty!

Si Aron Ralston ang peg ko dito! Haha! Don't judge the cowboy hat!

Shux! It was super pretty in real life. Or maybe I'm just easily amused! I  love nature!

I personally enjoyed the Fairy Stream we didn't get to see what was in the end since Mom kept complaining about how hot it was and how tired she was getting so we headed back without getting to the end. UGH! Was disappointed. I am so going back to Mui Ne the next time I visit Viet Nam and finish the freaking Fairy Stream!!!

After that it was finally time to go back to the hotel. We got back at our hotel a little before 11AM. We were tired, felt sticky and hungry but we definitely had fun!

Our super nice driver/ tour guide.

About to head out to the beach after the tour. That behind us is our room. It was a really nice little hotel.

My plan was to swim for a little bit since I looooove beaches! I even had my togs on if you guys haven't noticed from the photos! But alas, we couldn't find where the way to the beach was and time was running out. Our trip back to Ho Chi Minh was at 2PM. So we decided to just walk back to the hotel and rest.

We left our hotel a little before 2. Had lunch at the restaurant beside the travel agency then embarked on our 6 hour journey back to Ho Chi Minh. =)

Lunch!

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The Mui Ne tour  cost us about $130. That's about 5,000 pesos. That includes bus fare (round trip), hotel accommodation, private jeep, tour guide, sand dune tour, Fishing Village tour and Fairy stream tour. Worth it in my opinion. =)

TIPS!!!

1. I think you can also schedule your sand dune tour during the late afternoon when the sun's not that high anymore. You can't book it on afternoon because duh obviously the sand would be too hot to walk on. So it's either early morning or late afternoon. I think early morning is better! Our tour guide picked us up at 6AM. Initially, when our travel agency told us that we requested a later pick up time so we can sleep longer but NO! 6AM in my opinion is actually too late! Have your tour guide pick you up earlier like... I dunno 5AM. so you can enjoy the sand dunes longer!

2. Bring water and food. Don't wanna starve and dehydrate yourself=)

3. You can rent the sleds for about 20,000 dong I think.

4. At the Fairy Stream, you will be asked by a bunch of kids to remove your footwear and leave it at the starting point. DON'T LEAVE IT THERE. CARRY YOUR FOOTWEAR WITH YOU. They'll charge you 3,000 dong per person. What they'll do is make you leave your footwear then when you comeback they charge you then point at the sign board (which wasn't there before)  that says that leaving your footwear will cost you 3000 dong.

5. Also, kids will offer you their tour guiding services at the Fairy Stream. YOU DON'T NEED A GUIDE. If they tell you the water's too deep blah blah blah. LIES. You can walk all by yourself. We did it ourselves with no help from a guide and we were safe and sound all throughout the walk. No deep water or anything. The deepest water there is didn't even reach up  my knee.

6. If you're planning to go to Mui Ne alot at least two days for your trip since there's tons of places to visit! We were only there half day since we had to get back the next day for our Cu Chi Tunnel tour. BITIN!

Alright, that's it. I'll try to post the last part in a few days. =)
Thanks guys! Hope you enjoyed!
GOD BLESS!