Mui Ne

Neither of us actually even new this place exists until we were going through a friend's blog posts about her trip in Vietnam in 2011. We saw pictures of beautiful sand dunes and did a little searching on google, and discovered that, not only would it be a convenient way to break up the bus ride from Nha Trang to Ho Chi Min City, but we could go sand sledding too!!!

We stayed in the Mui Ne Backpackers Resort for an extravagant $12.50 each a night (it was th cheapest we could find without resorting to bunking in a dorm). It was a pretty nice place, although if it were anywhere else you wouldn't pay that price for it. It had a small pool, lounge chairs out by the ocean ( the rear yard stopped and the ocean began- no beach here) and our room came complete with ants, geckos, and birds nesting in the ceiling!^^

After accidentally burning ourselves lazing in the sun on our first day, we chilled out on our second morning then went on a jeep tour of the sand dunes, red and white, and a so-called fairy stream. Not long after four pf us had piled into the jeep, the driver stopped and loaded one more passenger into the boot! it had a seat and no rear window, but he was really tall so had to keep his head down.

Our first stop was the 'fairy stream' (where a tiny green snake slithered across the stream in front of us! It was maybe the length of 3 decent sized worms, but it was enough to freak me out-ick!!!! While we were wandering down the stream in search of a supposed waterfall (which we never found), we chatted with Alex (the guy in the boot), who is on vacation after living and working in Perth, Australia during the last 6 months/ year? He was very funny and kept us laughing throughout the day. Meeting new people is the best part of traveling!

Our next stop was the 'Red Canyon'. It was a little (very) underwhelming and I think canyon is probably not the word I'd use for it, but we did get to enjoy watching a heard of goats being moved across the road. (Goats are kinda exciting because Anne has a thing about them, or more accurately, she has a thing about how goats can bleat and sound like people screaming ^^)

After enjoying the glory of the canyon, we headed to the White Sand Dunes, where you could rent an atv for a price well out of our budget, and rent a 'sled' for $2.50. I opted out of the sledding , and held bags instead. It turned out that the sledding wasn't as smooth or as fast a ride as expected and I was in hysterics watching Anne and Alex try and coax their sleds down the dunes.

Our final stop was at the red dunes just in time for sunset. As soon as our jeep stopped, we were surrounded by kids selling stuff, but they dispersed pretty quickly. The sand at the red dunes felt a lot finer than the white (which stung like a biatch when the wind blew it all over us). Alex, Anne and I found a nice spot and watched the sunset while chatting about our travels and future plans. It was a really lovely way to end the day.