Show me the Mui Ne
I read somewhere that cockroaches can survive a nuclear war. I don't know if that's true or not but I can tell you that they are no match for a naked drunk with a flip flop. I was just trying to have a shower after a night out when a family of four emerged from the plughole and tried to rush me. I think the girly screaming stunned them enough for me to dispatch them with my rubber sole. We were in Mui Ne this week, a coastal resort catering for a surprisingly high number of Russian tourists. It's basically one long road, lined with hotels and restaurants, running parallel to the beach. Unless you like kitesurfing or watching badly-dressed Russians pawing the local girls there's not a great deal to do.
We took a trip to the dunes just north of the village. I wasn't really expecting Vietnam to have
a desert but here we were, traipsing through the sand with a plastic sheet that the local kids hire out for 50,000 dong (about £1.60). The idea is to use
the plastic to sledge down the sand dunes. It must work better if you're a tiny little Vietnamese child because, as a cumbersome great oaf, I was making little headway and spent quite a lot of time just sat on it without moving. We eventuall
y found a dune steep enough for us to actually gather some momentum. Sliding down was one thing but clambering back up the dune was quite another - it was like running up an escalator the wrong way. After a few goes at that we were sodden with sweat, had sand in every available orifice and were gasping like lost legionnaires. The fun had somehow gone out of it.
We hired a scooter,
just to fit in, which was much more fun. The protective headgear in Vietnam's scooter community is pretty basic and usually no more than just skateboard helmets. The ones that came with our hire bike, however, were 'top of the range'. Claire got a stripy skullcap that made her look like a Colorado beetle while I was given a sort of Nazi stormtrooper's helmet. This would be fine if we were sat astride a Harley Davidson but on a little 100cc Yamaha we felt a bit silly.
We rode our mean machine to a little fishing village just up the road. The boats had come in and the catch was being brought ashore by men in little round coracles. On the beach, the local women were shelling scallops, gutting fish and smashing big whelk things. It stank. The whelk smashing looked fun though and one
of the women beckoned me over, handed me a scaffolding pole and let me get stuck in. I soon realised she was just getting me to do her work for her. A guy on a moped (natu
rally) came whizzing along the beach and all the women rushed over with whatever they had shelled so far in carrier bags. Each haul was weighed and then emptied into either a large sack or a big crate which were then both put on the bike. The poor guy was so overladen that the bike started to sink into the wet sand and he had to ask me to give him a push out. It can be hard work being a nosey tourist.
For our
last night in Mui Ne we hit a couple of the beach bars. We ended up in one salacious establishment that sold Vodka Redbull in little seaside buckets. We must have drank a lot of these because the rest of the night is a little hazy... we did dance a lot, we did nearly get into a fight with some of those badly-dressed Russians and we did end up skinny-dipping in the sea with
a very nice Dutch couple. In what order any of that happened is anyone's guess. We have a vague recollection of getting home on the back of a taxi bike. Claire had managd to lose a shawl and her pants - and arrive home wearing someone else's flip flops. They were useful for when the cockroaches appeared though.
SCOOTERS OF THE WEEK
We took a trip to the dunes just north of the village. I wasn't really expecting Vietnam to have
a desert but here we were, traipsing through the sand with a plastic sheet that the local kids hire out for 50,000 dong (about £1.60). The idea is to use
the plastic to sledge down the sand dunes. It must work better if you're a tiny little Vietnamese child because, as a cumbersome great oaf, I was making little headway and spent quite a lot of time just sat on it without moving. We eventuall
y found a dune steep enough for us to actually gather some momentum. Sliding down was one thing but clambering back up the dune was quite another - it was like running up an escalator the wrong way. After a few goes at that we were sodden with sweat, had sand in every available orifice and were gasping like lost legionnaires. The fun had somehow gone out of it.We hired a scooter,
just to fit in, which was much more fun. The protective headgear in Vietnam's scooter community is pretty basic and usually no more than just skateboard helmets. The ones that came with our hire bike, however, were 'top of the range'. Claire got a stripy skullcap that made her look like a Colorado beetle while I was given a sort of Nazi stormtrooper's helmet. This would be fine if we were sat astride a Harley Davidson but on a little 100cc Yamaha we felt a bit silly.
We rode our mean machine to a little fishing village just up the road. The boats had come in and the catch was being brought ashore by men in little round coracles. On the beach, the local women were shelling scallops, gutting fish and smashing big whelk things. It stank. The whelk smashing looked fun though and one
of the women beckoned me over, handed me a scaffolding pole and let me get stuck in. I soon realised she was just getting me to do her work for her. A guy on a moped (natu
rally) came whizzing along the beach and all the women rushed over with whatever they had shelled so far in carrier bags. Each haul was weighed and then emptied into either a large sack or a big crate which were then both put on the bike. The poor guy was so overladen that the bike started to sink into the wet sand and he had to ask me to give him a push out. It can be hard work being a nosey tourist. For our
last night in Mui Ne we hit a couple of the beach bars. We ended up in one salacious establishment that sold Vodka Redbull in little seaside buckets. We must have drank a lot of these because the rest of the night is a little hazy... we did dance a lot, we did nearly get into a fight with some of those badly-dressed Russians and we did end up skinny-dipping in the sea with
a very nice Dutch couple. In what order any of that happened is anyone's guess. We have a vague recollection of getting home on the back of a taxi bike. Claire had managd to lose a shawl and her pants - and arrive home wearing someone else's flip flops. They were useful for when the cockroaches appeared though. SCOOTERS OF THE WEEK
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