Day 52

Sand Dunes

Mui Ne is known for its sand dunes and tours are pretty standardised so we ended up booking a sunset tour through our hostel. It started at 1.30 so we had some time to kill in the morning. We grabbed a heart breakfast where I ended up having 1 and a ahalf banana pancakes as they got our order wrong and delivered us one too many. We went to go and explore the beach which was nice but the highlight would have been the various windsurfing schools. Unfortunately it was $50 per hour lesson - a bit above my budget. After that we played a little ping pong before realising we were too terrible so we ended up chilling in the pool for a while attempting to play volleyball.

We then grabbed some lunch where I went for the super authentic cheeseburger and fries which was a bit of a mission as we had really only just had breakfast. We get picked up in a bright blue jeep by our driver (who didn't speak any English) and we were on our way to the first of 4 destinations for the day.

Destination 1 was called Fairy Stream which is a shallow stream that weaves through some red and white sand. It was quite nice to walk barefoot through it. We accidently ended up in a mini zoo labelled a garden and was kind of forced to pay a small entry fee. I felt quite bad as it wasn't alot of space for the animals but we got to see some crocodiles - the biggest of which was stood so still with its mouth agape I thought it was a statue but you could just about see it's eyes moving. There were some hedgehogs, porcupines, and chickens too. We wandered back and found our driver and headed to destination number 2.

Destination 2 was more of a stop than a destination as we pulled over on the side of the road to look over the fishing village - loads and loads of concentrated fishing boats and floating tubs. After getting a picture we headed onwards.

Destination 3 was an exciting one. It was the white sand dunes. We had to pay extra to hop on the back of some quad bikes which kinda sucked as I thought we'd be cruising in the jeep across the dunes. It wasn't until I was on the back of the quad that I no longer cared how much it was as it was fucking awesome. I was solo as Alfie and Daisy shared another but I didn't mind because we absolutely zoomed up, down, and across the dunes. I held on as tight as I could thinking to myself "no wander why my insurance doesn't cover this". We made it to stop 1 which was the sandboarding spot. It was more sand sledding than boarding but I was immediately down for it. I was given a little plastic sheet with a handle, laid back and absolutely propelled down this big slope. When you hit the divots at the bottom you go tumbling off the sled into the sand but sand is luckily pretty soft. Now you had to climb back up the slope which was pretty akin to trudging up a snow slope of fresh powder. Absolutely exhausted at the top I thought to myself that I need to get fitter for the Alps. I bombed it down the slopes a total of 4 times. Go 2 and 3 I felt more in control than the last attempt and landed pretty smoothly, managing to land on my feet pretty quickly. I was still covered in sand but it wasn't until my final one where I must have hit a divot with too much speed and I ended up tumbling a fair bit ending up with sand everywhere. Sand in my nose, ears, mouth and every bit of skin - I was crunching on sand for a good while afterwards. After that it was time to head down the slope I had just been bombing down on the quads which I must admit was a little worrying but very fun. Bombing up and down some hills we stopped next to some water for a while before heading back to go to our last destination.

Destination 4 was the red sand dunes. This was more of a stop and watch the sunset kinda place but we got there about an hour before sunset so we went for a little walk first. It wasn't massive and was very close to Mui Ne so we sat along the main ridge with everyone else to watch the sunset. It was pretty cloudy but we still managed to catch some of the orange rays casting across the sky.

After our tour we swam for a little bit longer again before heading out for dinner. This time I went for some authentic spaghetti and garlic bread before we planned our next couple days and headed back.Read more