Vietman: Ho Chi Minh City and Mui Ne

We spent very little time in Ho Chi Minh City.  We stopped for one night on our way to Mui Ne from Hanoi and one more before catching our flight to Singapore.  Despite the limited time in the city, there was still plenty of adventure.  When we arrived from Hanoi, we ran into some problems at the hotel we had booked for the night and decided to go somewhere else.  We walked around for about twenty minutes in the midday heat, passing only hotels that rented rooms by the hour, until we finally found somewhere satisfactory to stay.  By "satisfactory" I mean it did not appear to cater to prostitutes, had a shower, and a bed.  It did, however, stink of what we first thought was a lot air freshener combined with cigarette smoke.  The smell stayed strong all night and I was actually concerned it might make us sick.  It got into some of our clothes, but other than that, we survived.  After checking in to our "satisfactory" room, we took a taxi to a tour office to book bus tickets for the following day.  We quickly realized that our hotel was not in the tourist area, perhaps explaining the numerous "by the hour" hotels in the neighborhood.  The part of the city where the tour office was located had a nice park, plenty of shops and restaurants, and no obvious signs of "by the hour" hotels.  Obviously, we stayed in this area upon our return from Mui Ne.

Park in Ho Chi Minh City

Mui Ne is a beach resort town on the southeast coast, approximately five bus hours from Ho Chi Minh City.  We stayed at a small beach front hotel on the quieter end of the strip.  Though Mui Ne is a "beach town," in reality, the beach is quite small and the sand apparently migrates up and down the coast with the seasons, leaving many resorts (including ours) with only a concrete breakwater instead of a sandy beach.  This was not a problem for us at all since the pool was just beyond the breakwater.  We could sit by the pool on lounge chairs while still enjoying the sea breeze and sound of crashing waves.  There are a few "attractions" around Mui Ne, including sand dunes, a fishing village, and a stream, but since we came to Mui Ne to simply relax and recuperate, we decided to skip the tours.

View from our balcony

On the shore of the South China Sea

We spent a full two weeks in Mui Ne and fell into a nice routine of doing very little.  Each morning we had our breakfast at the hotel restaurant overlooking the South China Sea.  Breakfast was included with the cost of our $24 room with an ocean view.  The breakfast menu included beefsteak, instant noodles, Vietnamese bread (toast) with butter and jam or cheese, fried noodles, banana pancakes, and deep fried bananas. It probably goes without saying that our selections either included bread or bananas.  One morning Simon requested beefsteak to see what would happen but they said it was not available.  I think the server was quite surprised by the request.  After breakfast we headed to the pool to swim, read, listen to music, or just doze off.  The majority of the time, we were the only ones there.  We stayed outside until we had enough sun or wind.  (Mui Ne is well known for the high winds which kick off like clock work every afternoon).  We then relaxed in the air conditioned room until dinner time when we headed to the same restaurant every night. Three puppies, which we obviously nicknamed, sat by our feet while we ate (at least until they decided someone else's food smelled nicer.)  Our routine varied only with the occasional walk down the street to the bookstore, bank, or mini-mart.

Simon lounging in the pool

Me waiting for banana pancakes in the extremely busy hotel restaurant

Our breakfast view

Captain Underbite

Marley

Sleepy

Though we enjoyed our time in Mui Ne, we were both excited to move on to Australia.  Our two weeks of downtime gave us time to make some plans for the rest of "part one" of our trip (Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji), and to dream of western food.  I don't think either of us will be eating rice or stir fry for a while.