Mui Ne

Kim enjoying the winter!
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The trip to MuiNe is around 4.5 hours by bus.  Funny but trips like this seem really easy now whereas 4 hours on a bus in the UK would have seemed like a nightmare. The scenery on the way is very very beautiful as we pass paddies (fields that is) that stretch for miles that seem to glow emerald  green in the Viet sun.  Half way down the coast we pass vinyards and wineries which are a welcome sight!but a little unexpected.

Mui Ne has two claims to fame, one is the stunning beaches and the other is the fish sauce trade.  You have got to smell this stuff to believe it!  The fish are fermented in huge jars along the road side and the resulting mixture decanted into plastic bottles.  Fortunately this all goes on down wind of the beaches but when ou get a good whiff of the stuff youcan't comb it out of your nostril hairs for hours.

January storms
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We really struggle to find a place to stay as it's still the new years holiday and most places are full.  We have to tramp up and down the strip a fair bit in steaming heat before we find a place as evening closes in where we stay one night so we can look around a bit later.  We have a room right on the ocean front, but there are some benches outside our room and we're woken at 4AM by a loud, drunk californian couple having a discussion about their various attributes

Girl Friday
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" I know I'm a bit fat but I love my AAASS I just lurrve my AAAASS"

I suggest we ask them their room number so that at 8am tomorrow when they are trying to catch up on sleep we can bellow how much we love our tits and testicles outside their room. Kim goes out and asks them to shut up and off they toddle.

We decide to splurge on a room at the Seagull resort.  The Seagull is set in 5 Hectares of tropical gardens, it has a huge pool, a restaurant-bar that opens onto a private beach of very soft yellow sand, a Gym, Tennis, Pool, snooker; the rooms are set up as thatched beach huts and very comfortable it costs 20 quid a night including buffet breakfast with egg bar (any way you like) and Crepe station (any filling you like)

Just another day in Paradise
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We're having a sundowner in the beachside cocktail bar at around 17:30, it's 4th Jan and around 30 degrees(sorry) we employ all our mime and linguistic skills to order "another Jim Beam and a Black Russian with Ice please" after 10 minutes our waiter returns with............ a lime cut in four pieces.

The food here is wonderful and we stroll the beach side road looking into the barbys outside the restaurants till we see something we like the look of.  Fantastic fish and shrimp all fresh and freshly chargrilled with the loca wine at around 90p a bottle.  During the day at the beach front the guys will whip the top off a fresh coconut for you and we supplement this with food smuggled away from the brekky buffet.  Suppers of boily egg, cheese and cold meat with wonderful fresh french loaves and local wine bought across the raod eaten on the beach never tasted sooooo good.  Sundown at the beach front is just magnificent.

On our last day at the resort the place gets overrun again with weekenders from the South, they arrive in a huge bus load andstart leaping about in the surf and running up and down the beach like dervishes, in the evening there's a Kareoke competition Nnnoooooooooooo!!! followed by men stamping around in circles taking their shirts off (winnner gets  a fag lighter) followed by a women dressing men as women and parading them around competition, (winner receives a torch) Next morning a group of about a dozen Vietnamese march past the incredible breakfast selection, into the sea where they fish about for shell fish, light a gas stove (don't you always pack one?)on the beach and boil them.

We have a 5-6 hour bus trip to Saigon infront of us so we have a huge breakfast thenm lounge in the pool till it's bus time.  Mui Ne..... what can I tell you?  Go there............ it's beautiful!