Beach life in Vietnam (Prior to typhoon)

Susi looking quite comfortable...

 It was time to leave the manic scooter city of Ho Chi Minh and Mui Ne was our next stop in Vietnam. We shopped around and found the cheapest open bus ticket we could, $41 dollars for 6 stops all the way up the coast of Vietnam. Not bad considering its 1650km. To get there we got to experience our first sleeping bus. (Basically a bus with beds instead of seats) Susi was the perfect size for the beds and slept like a baby.

The view from our bungalow...

We arrived in Mui Ne with just enough light to find ourselves a nice place to stay so with our packs strapped on we headed down the beach away from the moderately expensive backpacker place. Strangely enough there where a lot of Russian accents floating around as we walked?

About 10 minutes in we stumbled across this tiny little place with bungalows on the beach called La Pelican. The bungalows had their own little veranda with fantastic views down the beach and not a soul in sight. We arrived just in time to see sunset, which was beautiful especially because of the kite surfers kites where still flying. It was nice to be back by the sea after so much time on the Mekong. That night we headed back down towards the backpackers place and found what is probably the best food so far in S.E.Asia. It’s a family run restaurant on the beach called Lam Tuong (Check Lonely Planet). The food was really really good and average around 1-2 dollars a meal!

The next day was dedicated to chilling out and spending some time on the beach and at least try to change from pasty white to a slightly browner white. Unfortunately I won’t catch up to Susi who already has the bronzed look! We took time to have a nice long walk down the 4km stretch of beach and got very tempted by the kite surfing. (I will have to try this at some point!) We did book a little day trip to the sand dunes the next day though. That evening we went out for a quiet drink down the road in a place called Joe’s. It turned out that every night they have an act on. We for some reason managed to find a Rastafarian Vietnamese man singing Bob Marley and UB40 tunes! Random… the reggae theme continues!

After a few beers at happy hour and a few games of pool on a wonky pool table we decided to head back to our Family Restaurant for some more delicious food. We even managed to get a free bottle of wine out of it, well sort of, they forgot to add it to the bill, happy days for Susi. We took what was left of the wine back to our bungalow for a little drink on the balcony before bedtime. Unfortunately we got chatting to our neighbors. Two Chilean guys and a Scotsman drinking a bottle of vodka.  We joined them and they persuaded us to hit an early Halloween party down the strip. We had a really good night meeting the guys who gave us some great suggestions for when we get to Chile. (Thanks Gabriel, Sebastian and Ricardo, Enjoy the rest of your travels and stay safe, See you in Santigao Gabriel!)

Sebastian, Ricky, Gabriel, Lee and the Bucket...

The next day not feeling on top form we headed to the sand dunes. On the way taking in a little place called the Fairy Stream or Red Stream. It’s a bizarre little shallow stream that has a solid sand base and leads up to a little waterfall. Very random but it was quite picturesque. We then stopped at the little fishing port which had hundreds of Junks anchored, perfect for a picture or two. We arrived at the huge mountainous white sand dunes as if we were in the dessert and where greeted by a man renting quad bike tours on the sand dunes. I managed to persuade Susi it would be worthwhile and that I would be careful :)

We got half an hour buzzing around the dunes, which was brilliant. Susi had a go too with me on the back and she scared the living daylights out of me. Then I got to play by myself for a bit doing some donuts without tipping the bike on top of me! Unfortunately we had to leave this place to catch sunset at the red sand dunes. We had a nice walk to the top with the four other people from our jeep and played in the sand a little more before we headed back.

The Russian resort!...

The next day we moved onto our next stop on the journey, Nha Trang. A short six hour bus ride took us to our next destination a little further north up the coast. We arrived in the dark so grabbed our bags and headed to the area recommended by the Lonely Planet. We found a little place called Hoa Sen which had much bigger rooms and nicer than the lonely planet recommendations. Susi worked her magic again and got us a discounted $8 per night! It had everything we needed apart from a pool but being 100m from the beach this didn’t matter too much. Our first impressions of Nha Trang was that it was too built up and more like a beach resort and even more surprisingly full of Russians!!!  Strange looking couples where the fat rich Russian men had there more smaller attractive wife.  There were shops and restaurants dedicated to Russian people with not a bit of English in sight! The beach was lovely though and we spent the next day relaxing on the beach. We found a cool bar called ‘Why Not Bar’ apparently there are a few. Low and behold we bumped into more of our Slowboat Friends from Laos. This time it was the Swede’s, Kim and Mikael. (Stay safe in the storm guys).

The day after this we booked a ticket to Vinpearl. It’s a really cool island of the coast of Nha Trang with a waterpark, indoor and outdoor amusement park and a lovely beach. To get over to the island you take the longest cable car in the world (apparently). We had a brilliant morning playing on the rollercoasters and on all of the free arcade games. We had some cheap food for lunch and headed over to the waterpark. This was amazing. It had slides that neither of us had seen before, in particular one called ‘Tsunami’ which was by far the best. Unfortunately Susi wasn’t expecting being thrown into a bowl on the black hole ride and jarred her neck when she fell meaning no more rides or slides for Susi for the rest of the day. I had a go on a few more by myself before we went back over to the arcades. We played Streetfighter II and Susi kicked my ass everytime!!! Apart from the ‘minor injury’ it was a fun day out.

The rest of Nha Trang we lazed around on the beach with Kindles in hand cooling off in the huge waves. We had a few quiet nights and a few more in the Why Not Bar (Why Not, when you are welcomed with a free shot and a jaeger-bomb).

Tropical storm finally catches us...

We heard on the grape vine there where two typhoons headed our way so we planned to leave the next day on an overnight journey to Hoi An. This time we where not so lucky with the weather and a Tropical storm hit us just before we left, it was like being back up north again and we had to buy some lovely raincoats. The journey was ok though and we managed to miss the worst of the weather.

We have a love/hate relationship with these bus journeys! The bus this time was full, had a broken toilet and was predicted to take 12hrs, it actually took over 15hrs with only 1 stop for a toilet break. The stubborn driver refused to stop and it took the whole bus shouting at him to get him to stop. (Susi was relieved she wasn’t on her own on this one even though it was a bush on the side of the road)

We arrived in Hoi An and found another bargain room in Hotel ‘My Chau’ not far from the buzz and it had a really friendly owner who gave us lots of good advice on where to go and what to see and especially about the local delicacies.


Hoi An is a stunning little town with coloured Chinese lanterns lining streets full of shops prepared to make any piece of clothing you want. Susi thinks it’s a magical place and was silent for ten minutes. Yes ten minutes! As we have already found it’s hard to capture the moment with a photo, though we tried our best.

We had a good walk that night to get our bearings and found a little place called ‘Lame Café’ where we sampled the 3000d beer (9.09p) and some really nice Hoi An specialties. The Cao Lau (Thick yellow noodles and spicy pork with mint and wontons) is my new favorite food and Susi loves the crispy seafood wontons. (Basically seafood covered poppadum’s).  This was a place we where going to visit again! We also found another placed called café 43.

Spot the mugs...

This had a really cool twist where everyone who had been there left a passport picture under the glass on the table with a little comment. (spot the mug shots!). This place also had some really nice beer and food and the owners are really nice. 
Whilst wandering we got sucked into one shop where Susi ordered two tailor made dresses. We had to wait an hour whilst some alterations where made to the dresses. In the meantime however she bought two more dresses and a top!!! 

On our hotel’s advice we hired granny bikes and headed to the beach the next day. It was a really nice 4k bike ride through some little towns and lovely riverside shacks to an isolated beach restaurant where we had some really good food and relaxed on the deserted beach for the day. With chilled white wine and fresh calamari served to her sunbed, Susi loved it.  Even got to do a bit of body surfing as the waves there were brilliant. If only we could of hired body-boards! Factor 50 still isn’t strong enough and we both came back slightly rouge!

Lame Cafe owner...

So here we are sat in our ‘Lame Café’ again drinking 3000d beers writing this blog. (Well I’m writing, Susi is drinking and critiquing!) We have about 8 hours until the full force of Typhoon Haiyan hits and hopefully we will be able to tell you all about it in the next installment…….