Adventures Abound In Vietnam

Disclamer: If you have a maternal relation to anyone mentioned in this post, for the sake of your own sanity, you may want to skip this post and move on to the next one. Just pretend it never happened.

For those of you keeping score at home, this post is going to cover our visits to the towns of Mui Ne, Dalat, and Nha Trang - in that geographical (moving north) and chronological order.

We took the 3 7 bus ride from Saigon to Mui Ne, with rain accompanying us the whole way there and accumulating to the point that the street and all of the garden area in our hostel were flooded in ankle-deep water - an inauspicious start to a beach-town stay. However, the rainy season weather gods smiled down on us and that first night's downpour was the only precipitation we saw in Mui Ne. The next morning, we woke up to discover that our guesthouse was situated right on the beach and so we spent the early morning bathing in and strolling along the pristine water. Since our first day in Mui Ne coincided with Memorial Day back in the states, and since it has apparently become customary to post boastful shots of whatever epic location you are "observing" the holiday from, here is our belated contribution to the tradition:

Our Guesthouse's Back Yard

Happy Memorial Day!

Feeling energized by our morning beach time, we decided to rent a ~~motorbike~~ scooter (gasp!) and take a self-guided tour of the sand dunes that surround the town. And just as an aside, we are both officially opposed to the use of "dangerous" two-wheeled vehicles as a mode of transportation (especially if any future offspring ever come across this blog), but the ride, albeit a bit scary at first, was pretty cool. The drive to the dunes is what we imagine a cruise down Highway 1 would be like if it weren't, you know, perpetually covered in fog and you could actually see the Pacific. This is just a facetious way of saying that our drive featured magnificently sweeping views of the water from the cliffs above. The fleets of fishing vessels dutifully occupying the water also made for awesome scenery:

Safety First!

A Fishing Boat Armada

Stopping To Take In the View

The red dunes (about 5 km outside of town) are an expansive series of sandy hills whose surreal juxtaposition to the coast line gives the impression that you have somehow stepped off the beach and landed directly in a desert. Luckily, the area is full of many helpful locals, mostly young children, willing to assuage your confusion and even teach you how to slide down the sand dunes - for a small fee of course. We had a great time sliding down the hills and then laboring back up to the top for another go-round.

The Red Dunes

Avi Demonstrating Proper Technique With the Slide

"Summiting" the Dunes:

Hooray!

If the red dunes are surreal in their aridity and proximity to the beach, then the white dunes (a further 25 km away), a sine wave of shimmering sand hills perched above a dark blue lake, evoke the image (or is it a mirage?) of a desert oasis. Resisting the swarms of touts offering anything from plastic slides to ATV rides, we toured the dunes by foot and got a few good snapshots:

The White Dunes and the Lake

The Seemingly Endless Majesty of the White Dunes

Did We Mention There Were Gigantic Shoes There?

On the way back to Mui Ne we were lucky enough to partake in a time-honored Vietnamese cultural tradition: the police extortion dance. It goes a little something like this:

1) A motorist is flagged to stop by the side of the road.
2) A routine check of the vehicle or documentation inevitably reveals a serious infraction (for us it was driving without a dedicated motorcycle license).
3) The detainee is informed that he/she has committed a grave offense that will result in the vehicle being impounded.
4) Luckily for the offender though, there is the option of paying a 200,000 Dong (~$10) "fine" and escaping unscathed and with control of the motorbike.

We took the whole process in stride, and were actually relieved that the amount requested was so low. The best part of the experience though, is when the cops realize that you realize what is going on, but to maintain the charade, they have you sign a notebook (we're almost certain that they used a Hello Kitty one) as if you are accepting an official ticket, although none is issued.

From Mui Ne, we moved more inland to Dalat, a highland town that aside from being a lively center of outdoor activity also serves as Vietnam's premier local honeymoon spot. The town was so full of Vietnamese enjoying their summer break that we had to go to six different guesthouses before finding an available room. We decided to take advantage of the great outdoors by booking a full-day canyoning tour. This was a phenomenal idea! There were many highlights to the day, not the least of which was our awesome group - which consisted of two British "adventure sport" instructors living in Thailand, an Irish college student who had been volunteering in Vietnam for the past few months, and two members of an Orthodox Israeli modern-dance troupe fresh off a performance in Singapore (we can't make this stuff up). The canyoning trip consisted of cliff jumping, water sliding down waterfalls, four repelling sessions down some cliffs, and incessant (and hilarious) banter by the Israelis in broken English and interspersed Hebrew. Here are some shots of the action:

Avishai Sliding Down a Mini-Fall

Rach Repelling Down a 25 Meter Waterfall

Avishai Jumping Into the Water

Our Group

And here's a vid of us jumping off a 7 meter high ledge:

Dalat also featured some excellent vegetarian fare, but we'll cover that in a later post.

Finally, after the action-packed day in Dalat we moved on to Nha Trang, essentially a larger, more rambunctious, and less sand-duney version of Mui Ne. We spent our time in Nha Trang snorkeling, getting stung by jelly fish (Avi), watching the locals fill the beach at sunrise, and relaxing with a mud bath and massage at a nearby spa.