The sea of fisher boats, seen from the Mui Ne city perspective.
Mui Ne the small fisher village at the turned into a more or less big resort within the last years. Actually Mui Ne is still the little fisher village but the 20 km road aside the beach leading to Mui Ne are filled resorts, little hotels, guesthouses, restaurants, souvenir and vodka shops. Most of them are russian owned hence you get approached in russian all the time, vodka bottles lay around, and restaurants have menu cards written in cyrilic letters. Yeah, nobody really likes them here (I was offered a box if beer, if I knock over a russian surfer) but most earn their money from them.
I kind of imagined the beach to be broader.
Mui Ne beach deserves a chapter in it self. The first time we entered this famous beach I was chocked by it’s size, because it is hardly present at most places. Only the part of the more „fancy“ Hotels would actually count as a beach (they shuffle the sand back every year, that is otherwise just washed away). The resorts closer to Mui Ne city use a different strategy. The just builded a concrete wave breaker directly in front of their ground the prevent the waves of washing away the whole hotel. This area is not really inviting for sunbathing anyway, because you have to share the limited space with everything that is wash onshore as well, like fisher nets, jelly fish, dead dogs and of course the tons of garbage (You can imagine that my beach stroll wasn’t that enjoyable).
Anyway, the fisher boats really look lovely spread out on the beach.
Despite everything we made this place our home for almost two weeks. We found a small hotel at the waterside charging us 12$ for a room without air condition (A fan was more than enough for good sleeping conditions). Our favourite place for the tasty iced coffee, fresh made fruit juice and vienamese curry was found to be just around the corner and the small booth in front made some very delicious sandwiches (we visited „our friend“ at least once per day). And the main reason for us staying here such a long time, the kite surfing school was only a 15 min walk away.
It’s not a house but at least a room at the sea side beach.
When you see these signs, stop for a coffee, a fresh pressed juice or even dinner. Everything is great.
After two days we were her „friends“ and kept buying her sandwiches until the last day.
To learn how to kite surf was what brought us to Mui Ne. During our stroll down the beach we were also confirmed that this must be the place for it based on the uncountable number of kite schools on the beach and kites on the water. The problem is just what to choose, when you don’t know what to go for. We stopped our attempted at the first school at the question: „Are the teachers insured?“ and got the answer: „No problem. Nothing can happen. It’s safe.“ Hmm sure. The second school made advertisement whit a monkey chained to a bench in front. I am not really sure, that this advertisement is a convincing one. So we ended up with Windchimes, it’s owner Mr. Trang, and Oli our teacher (being from Germany made me kind of feel safer).
Windchimes kite school, if you don’t find it, Mr. Trang will find you.
And here he is. The ever talkative Mr. Trang. According to his stories, he was the first to open a kite school in Mui Ne. soso
The hard fate of being a kite surf teacher. Working for 3 h a day, leaves a lot of time to spend on the cushions.
Surprisingly I found Kite surfing to be easier than expected (anyway afraid of the power of this piece of fabric) and pushed myself into going into the water despite the fact that I don’t like open sea. After the total of seven days Tom can claim to be able to kite surf (defined as having the kite under control, getting onto the board and manoeuvring the whole construct not only downwind but also against the wind back to the starting point). About me? I guess I will never be good friend with the sea. On my fifth day I was completely knocked out by food poisoning (that I probably got from swallowing to much seawater contaminated with dead dog). When I finally got back and almost managed to get me, the kite and the board into surfing conditions, I was hit by a jellyfish turning my food into something very painful, red and swollen and send me off to the hospital. I guess, I better try again in safe lake water at home ;).
Tom – kite surfing.
Me – almost kite surfing.
Me knocked out by the bad bacs. Was only funny afterwards.
But I got two nice reasons to enjoy Mui Ne without kite surfing. Melli and Kolja, who by coincidence spent their vacation in Vietnam and were in Mui Ne at the same time as we. Aside from having nice dinner and a couple of beers together I also had the possibility to do some „sightseeing“ with them. We went to the see the red stream coloured by the iron containing sand, got peeled in the with sand dunes (a lot of wind is great for surfing but pushes desert sand deep into your pores), and missed the sun set in the red sand dunes.
Boys at work … ah I misunderstood something.
Melli, Kolja, the sand dunes and a lot of wind.
If it hadn’t been for the clouds we could have enjoyed at least five minutes of sunset.
The day we headed to Saigon, we were actually a little sad to leave our little home.
