DEAR GOBO: Our Weekend at the Beach

Steven and I left to Mui Ne on Saturday from the Sinh Cafe Office in Pham Ngu Lao. The bus was a long distance bus with comfortable seats, but lacking an on-board toilet or television, both of which could be pros or cons depending on your experience with smelly on-board toilets and raucously loud Chinese movies. Soon after we started off, at 7:29 a.m., we were handed a Sinh Cafe bag with a bag of peanuts, bottled water and a wet towelette, the kind served at many local restaurants to wipe your hands before you eat. I was very much looking forward to seeing the countryside with its brilliant green rice fields, free range livestock and quaint little houses, so for first two and a half hours, I was somewhat disappointed at the seemingly endless scene of city streets passing by my window. Rows upon rows of shop fronts backed by houses of varying height and design eventually transformed into fields of young trees planted in straight rows, plots of banana trees surrounding small block one-room houses and increasingly larger squares of bright green rice seedlings.

When we turned on a road leading closer to the beach, I recognized the fields of dragon fruit trees that had struck me as so strange on my last ride down this strip except this time they were not as spectacular out of season without their bright pink blossoms of dragon fruit. High hills appeared and disappeared, as did gray storm clouds, as we traveled closer to the beach.

During our bus ride, a man from Sinh Cafe came around with a clip board asking us to write down the hotel where we would like to be dropped off. Since we hadn't yet decided on a place, Steven wrote down, Small Garden, one of the three places we had looked into and we decided that if we didn't want to stay there we could walk to the other two. When we arrived in Mui Ne, the bus began intermittent stops, dropping passengers at various hotels and resorts along the main street. The third or fourth stop was ours and as the bus rolled away, we walked up the drive of the Small Garden Hotel into a small courtyard with steps leading up to a reservation desk in a newly built/renovated wooden cottage. We inquired as to the availably of rooms and were quoted three prices, $25, $27 and $30, a little higher than the $10 we had found on a traveler's website, but not incredibly expensive either, so we asked to see a room on the beach.

We were led down a path through a beautifully maintained little garden, past a koi pond and identical wooden cottages with wooden recliners set on small front porches. When we came to the cottage at the end, we were shown inside a room well worth the $30 price tag, with attractive decorations, air-conditioning, and a large bathroom with hot water. Not wanting to make a decision until I had seen the beach, I walked down the path a little further to the beach, past a raised restaurant with low tables and two inviting hammocks. The path ended with a view of a long, white sandy beach and a brilliant blue sky above crystal clear water. Just steps from the end of the path, wooden beach recliners sat under a thatch umbrella, with a clear view of the water.

We decided to stay.

After changing into our bathing suites, we headed straight out to the beach. The water was warm, but with pockets of colder currents, and the view was great. Mui Ne is a long stretch of beach ending in two pointed jetties at each end, too far for us to make out without a day of exploring. The street is not visible from the beach because the hotels, resorts and restaurants take up all of the land between the road and the beach, but the hotels and resorts are small and attractive, none over four stories high, the majority only one story of attractively designed huts set back from the beach and d0 nothing to detract from the natural beauty of the area.

After an hour or so at the beach, we decided to walk up the beach to find something for lunch. We stopped at a family run Vietnamese restaurant, passing by the restaurants in the hotels and resorts, figuring them to be well outside our budget, and had an enjoyable lunch of grilled fish and lemon pepper and chili squid. After lunch we walked down to a tour office and bought our tickets for the bus back to Saigon the following day at 1:30 p.m. and wandered back to our hotel along the street checking out the various shops and restaurants and looking into the price of a motorbike rental for the following day. Afterward, we headed back into the water.

That evening, we decided to go for a walk down the beach before stopping somewhere for a pre-dinner cocktail. We walked down the beach away from the fishing village of Mui Ne to the Coastal City of Phan Thiet where the resorts got bigger and fancier, yet still not overbearingly so. After some time, we turned back and stopped in for a cocktail at the SunSea Resort next to our hotel, lured in by the beer menu, which, unlike most bars in Saigon, offered more than Heineken, Saigon, Tiger and 333. We had a few drinks and then walked out to the road where we found a restaurant that looked like a glorified tree house with a boat filled with various types of seafood on ice displayed out front. I picked out a dozen mussels and an oyster and Steven chose a whole Red Snapper, before walking up the wooden staircase to our table on the second floor overlooking the main road. We had a enjoyable dinner and then walked back to our hotel where, not used to late nights on the town, we crashed in the hammocks by the beach.

The next morning we got up and headed straight to the beach. After some time, our growling stomaches pulled us in to the restaurant at our hotel, where Steven had a flavorful banana pancake and I had a traditional Vietnamese breakfast of Pho Tom or Shrimp Soup. After breakfast we decided to see if we could rent a motorbike for a few hours to get to see a little more of Mui Ne and to get out to the sand dunes for which the area is famous.

We inquired at the front desk and the woman at reception began a conversation in Vietnamese with a man in the parking lot on a motorbike. Steven soon arranged for us to rent the man's bike for 40,000d or about $2.50 for an hour, which would give us time for another swim before we had to pack up and check out to catch our bus back to Saigon.

It has been over three years since I have driven a motor-scooter and just as much time for Steven. I was a little nervous about getting on both as a passenger and a driver, but convinced myself that if anywhere, Mui Ne, was the perfect place to get back on the horse, given that it is only one straight road with little traffic. Steven drove first and I asked him to take a test drive before speeding off down the street with me in tow. He took off smoothly and I watched him disappear into the distance thinking that I would be able to hear the commotion in this sleepy town if anything happened, even if I couldn't hear it. But soon, he came roaring back down the street, looking quite comfortable in the driver's seat, so I fastened my helmet and climbed aboard.

The trip from Mui Ne to the sand dunes is one I became intimately familiar with in 2005 having, unaware of the total distance and annoyed by the ceaseless hawking by the xe om guys, spurned all offers of a taxi and walked the some 5 - 8 kilometers (we estimated the distance as we rode) to the dunes. This time, on the back of a bike with Steven as my driver, it was much more pleasant and I remembered the few turns that took us straight past the dunes. Knowing we didn't have the time to dismount and explore, we rode a little further along the road with stunning views of the ocean and coastal islands, before turning back and heading back to our hotel. On the way back, after a quick stop at an ATM, Steven asked if I wanted to drive and so, we switched positions and we were out on the road. My first time on a motorbike in Thailand ended up with me in a tree, but my first time back after all this time was less eventful and I immediately remembered how to pull back on the gas while stepping on the clutch to change the gears and was surprisingly comfortable with Steven's extra weight on the bike. The cars made me a little nervous and turning around and down shifting weren't as smooth as simply driving forward and up-shifting, but it was good to remember how easy it was and gave me enough of a taste to look forward to the freedom of "next time."

We arrived in time for a leisurely swim and a leisurely lunch at our hotel's restaurant where we again found the food delicious and affordable. We were packed and ready for our bus at 1:30 p.m.

The bus ride back wasn't quite as pleasant as our ride there, us having purchased from a competitor company to Sinh Cafe, one of many who sell tickets and put you on any bus heading to your destination, but we made it well enough and in one piece.

Upon our arrival back in Saigon, we treated ourselves to an Indian dinner at Royal India, picked up a few DVDs and then caught a bus back to our apartment on Nguyen Tri Phuong. It was a lovely weekend and we look forward to going back, but we were glad to be home.

The path to our room, Small Garden Hotel, Mui Ne, Vietnam