3 days are more than enough for Ho Chi Minh City. Mui Ne here we come...
Mui Ne is the premier coastal beach resort in Vietnam. This kilometers-stretch-of-white-sand-beach in Mui Ne is also a paradise destination for kite-surfers and wind-surfers. The long stretch of beach is just like the beach at Sanya in Hainan Island but the Mui Ne town is very much less developed compared to Sanya. However Mui Ne is quite popular for beach vacation among Russians. I don't know why but you can see many of their signs are in Russian language. Though it is only 200 km away from HCMC, it still takes about 4-5 hours bus ride. The bus ticket was about USD6, which we bought from Shin Tourist Corp as well. It's quite convenient and you will be dropped off just in front of your hotel.
One of our meals - The Seafood Basket... The only food that we took there which I can remember of. The basket came with 2 huge tiger prawns, 1 fish, some standard size prawns, squids and scallops - about RM 40.00.
Our Hotel... Sailing Club Resort
I chose this hotel with no particular reason but based on the good reviews from Tripadvisor. It's rated #1 in Tripadvisor. It's a small boutique resort that comes in standard rooms and villas- not more than 40 of them in total.
The poolside... small. Quite empty during our stay.
The room... comfortable bed.
The bathroom... bronze lotus leaf sink.
The shower... just shower no bath.
The toiletries... quite a good one.
Outside our room...
The garden and villa...
The Sapa House... where our room was.
Water feature before the restaurant...
Recreational place...
Open air dining... where we took our breakfast everyday.
The way leading to the pool and restaurant...
The breakfast bar...
Breads, cereals and fruits...
Vietnamese coffee... very nice coffee that you should not miss! All the coffee came in half empty glasses. Why can't they fill up the glasses completely or just use a smaller glass? In fact all the places we had coffee were served half empty and above comment was not limited only to Sailing Club.
We could also order 1 dish from the ala-carte menu...
Mrs. Chialat ordered her sandwich...
I ordered a breakfast set...
The spa... we had the chance to try them out but it was just so so only.
The other "must-see" places in Mui Ne...
We booked our half-day tour at a shop next to our hotel at USD 8 per person. This Chinese made jeep would bring us to the Fishing Village, Fairy Stream, White Sand Dune and Red Sand Dune.
Small village...
The Mui Ne Coastline...
The fishing village... hundreds of fishing boats docked at the port that made it a breathtaking view!
The floating baskets were used to tranfer the catch from the boat.
The Fairy Stream...
The Withe Sand Dune...
Pond at White Sand Dune...
Pond that full of beautiful lotus...
Red Sand Dune...
My advice to those who want to visit these places... go EARLY! The sand was damn hot when we reached there at around 11 a.m. It would be good to start the tour at dawn as you could see more activities at the fishing village when the fishing boats come back with their catch and then reach the sand dunes before it gets too hot.
Evening stroll outside our hotel... street vendors started to set up their stalls.
Shop that sells surfing staff...
The beautiful garden of Terracotta Hotel next to Sailing Club...
Our flight back to KUL was at 20:00 p.m and the bus departed from Mui Ne was either in the early morning or afternoon. We ruled out the afternoon bus as it would be too rush and on the other hand we didn't want to leave our hotel in the early morning, so we booked a 7 seater Toyota Innova for 4 of us at USD 70. It was supposed to be a fast and comfortable ride to the airport but ended up quite a tortured one.
To be safe, we checked out at 1:30 p.m although the journey supposed to take just 2 hours by private car. I was worried as we would reach the airport early and the check-in counter was not yet open for our flight... Damn! We would then stuck in the airport for hours with our luggages and nowhere to go. But all my worries soon diminished...
Our taxi driver in his early 20s, maybe just got his driving license not long ago where he shamelessly drove slightly faster than a bullock cart- 40-50km/hr, all the way from Mui Ne to the airport! Mrs. Chialat was grumbling all the way and wanted me to tell him to drive faster or asked him to get off and let her drive. Unfortunately he didn't understand English and we had to bear with it. Though I was tired but I didn't dare to close my eyes even for a minute as Mrs. Chialat was sitting in front and I was worried that she might suddenly choke him to death. Thanks god this never happened and we finally reached the airport at 7 p.m. That scared the hell out of me as I thought we would miss our flight!
