Mui Ne

My preconceptions were all wrong. So wrong. I thought it'd be smaller. I thought it'd be full of jovial red faced expats smoking cigars and playing tennis, mixed up with odd backpacker who got lost on the way down from Nha Trang. I thought it'd all be quaint little bungalows on the beach, tropical breeze blowing of an evening. Whilst partly true, here's what else I discovered.

Mui Ne should be renamed 'Mui Netski'. It's not that I dislike the Russians, their terrible dress sense, bad driving and stern features, it's just that I've never seen so many before. I failed to take pictures of the signs written in Russian -- they litter the travel agencies and high-end resorts. To be fair, take any group of tourists who don't go abroad very often and bring thier obnoxious but acceptable in their native countries behaviour with them, and it'll grate when you have such a totally different frame of mind.

Mui Ne has a very nice stretch of beach, now cluttered with fancy bungalow resorts. Here was my favourite out of the 30 or so I went in to for Travelfish, Terracotta.

Past the resorts Mui Neski looks like this:

Now, Mui Neski is 'one of the windiest places in Asia', hence a large number of people kite surfing. Forget the tropical breezes, try tropical gale. Here, looking back across the tourist area, you can spot the vast number of kites with humans leashed to them.

This is more the Mui Ne I had in my head:

On my way to the infamous sand dunes I found this sandy street. I don't want to harp on about it, just take a look and make your own mind up.

On the way, these guys wanted me to take a picture of them, so I did. They were fascinated with my brace.

Without doubt, Mui Ne has the largest number of fishing boats you're ever likely to see. Can you guess the highest employing industry in this small town? No.....it's not xe om driver.

Finally, I made it to the sand dunes only to be accosted by young scallywags with rubber mats demanding I slide down aforementioned dunes and have some damn fun doing it too. Chatting with the urchins, I find out they don't go to school. I ask why, they say no money. I have to wonder, is it no money, or make money? My wife agrees. Here is one of the anklebiters on his lookout.

Now to my motorbike. It was called the 'Rooney', bless it, after the famous Manchester United footballer.

Now that's all well and good, but I'm not sure about this one, because the name could be connected to something entirely different. Presenting the 'Pooney'-- who wouldn't want to ride one (of these motorbikes).