Saturday November 18th

Today promised to be a long day: we were to be picked up at 7am for a long bus ride to Mu Nie on the SE coast, then spend the afternoon and evening there before taking a night bus back to Saigon. Good thing our ladies could do a good breakfast early.

The ride down the hill began in thick cloud and rain (Scottish scenery) but as we dropped we had fine views of the arid coastal plain. As we zig-zagged down we crossed under some enormous pipes several times: the main hydro-electric project in the country. Once on the flat it was hot and dry, and the scrub and cacti put us in mind of California. The first bus took us to the coast where we had a brief view of the Cham towers: a collection of four towers built by Hindus in the 13th century, and therefore not disimilar in style to Angkor.

Then we piled aboard a minibus to Mu Nie, passing through more arid scenery, with the main local product seeming to be grapes. The road into Mu Nie passes the famous sand dunes, a collection of large dunes in both golden and red sand that lie close to the beach. Mu Nie itself is a fishing village which you pass through before coming to a road paralleling the sea which is just filled with hotels, resorts, bars and restaurants.

We were dropped in the middle of town and left our bags in the travel office before heading onto the beach. A lively place it is, strong onshore breezes make it ideal for wind surfing and kite surfing and many (mostly expert) people were doing one or other. We took the easier approach of sitting in a restaurant watching with the odd sojourn into the warm surf!

After sunset (and with a long evening ahead before the 1 am bus) we found a bar with pool table and settled down to fill some hours trying to get back into practice. After the first bar started to fill with much younger people than us we moved on and found another where Tim read a book about survivors of the Khmer Rouge attrocities in Cambodia and Tracy befriended two backpackers on the pool table, an American from Mississippi and a Frenchman. We ended up spending the rest of the evening here before making our way to a hopping spot opposite the travel office for some late food and a last beer.

At 1am the travel office was dark but two of the employees were around... but sleeping under mosquio nets in the open restaurant area. They got up when the northbound bus passed through then went back to sleep, leaving us to wait for out transport. The first two buses that passed were those of the two other companies running these trips, and ours didn't get there till about 2.20. At least it was a comfortable journey from then on!