Facet Squared

Pictorials again - Mui Ne continued - Da Lat - Hoi An

A quick run through of the last little while. Sorry blog fans, posts will become more sporadic over the next little bit while we go to Sapa for the week followed by a small place called... urm China. Computing might be hard.

Just up the road from Mui Ne is a small fishing village where all those fisher men and women I mentioned come from. A lot of them get around in these little basket boats which seem less than safe but then I saw a kid swim from shore to one of them a couple of kilometres off shore. Occupational Health and Safety experts would have a field day with the Vietnamese fishing industry here.


Mui Ne doesn't have much to offer apart from a long beach but they like to play up their tourist attractions including these impressive white sand dunes. I actually loved them but one thing I learnt from this is that white sand dunes are fucking hot... FACT!


Which led to me rocking this Lawrence of Arabia look. This was a variation of the one Cambodian kids found soooo hilarious. I also learned that if you slide down sand dunes on a big bit of plastic, you will end up with a crotch full of sand... FACT! You will also be pulling sand out of your hair and clothes for weeks afterwards... FACT!


We ended our tour of Mui Ne at the red sand dunes. Mui Ne basically traffics in sand related tourism... FACT!


We then moved onto Da Lat. I haven't got much to say about it because I got a bit depressed and home sick and just wanted to curl up into a ball and die... or some such thing. Actually, I just wanted my Mum. Anyhow, they call it the Paris of Vietnam and in case you didn't believe them, they built a fake Eiffel Tower. Almost as good as the real thing! (By the way, Ruth had a fabulous time here while I was sulking and has amazing photos of a motocycle tour she took through the hinterlands. If you know her, you should pester her to write an entry on it or send photos. It looked amazing.)




Anyhow, after my hissy fit in Da Lat, we then went to my favourite place in Vietnam, Hoi An. Hoi An is centred around an old town which is filled with French, Japanese and Chinese architecture. Almost every second shop is a tailor and its almost impossible to leave here without a new wardrobe. I said almost... I've still got the same old crappy clothes. We arrived on the full moon festival where all the streets of the old town were lit up with lamps and no traffic was allowed. Very nice!


We also took a boat ride down the river which was filled with floating candles. The woman rowing our boat grabbed one and put it on our boat. It was a very beautiful way to spend the evening.




Hoi An during the day looks like this. Of course, it would be remiss of me not to include a photo with a dog in it.


Hoi An also has great French Restaurants and I ate lots of deserts like this one, chocolate mousse cake. My God, it was fine. After four days in gorging myself, I now sport a late period Marlon Brando look... it suits me.


We then caught the express bus "Vietnam style" to Hue. Please note:
1. The guy in blue second from the right eating breakfast is the driver.
2. This was an hour after we got picked up and the bus was full.
3. It was about two minutes after he had put fuel in the bus.
4. I was tempted to go down and join him since I hadn't had any breakfast either because they collected us at 7am (we had to get up at 6am to make it).
5. We are approximately two blocks away from where we were picked up.
6. I was hungry and tired. He is a bastard.

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I'm on the night train!.. to Sapa tonight. See ya soon.