The bus from Dalat to Mui Ne was fairly miserable. Instead of riding on the already-too-small sleeper busses, we were on a regular shtutle bus. The bus ride was a windy 4 hours on windy dirt roads with the bus constantly shaking and random bumps almost knocking you out of your seat. Just when I decided that this was our worst bus ride we have had to go on, the driver stopped to pack in about 15 locals from some random village to ensure my knees had adequate contact with the seat in front of me.

I guess my leg was gently touching this girls leg next to me and she smacked my leg then glared at me. After that this bitch was on my shit list. We exchange glares throughout the next hour until thank god they all unloaded a few towns town.

Arriving in Mui Ne, it just felt like home. I had heard this place was a nice beach town with kite surfing, but I thought we would be missing it. Lucky for our bus screw up, we were in Mui Ne. The only problem was we were supposed to be heading straight to Saigon and our bus was leaving in an hour.

This place was beautiful and cities are not my thing. I couldn’t bear the thought of skipping over this just to go sit in a noisy dirty loud city. I know Jose doesn’t like to change plans so would not be happy with my suggestion.

I had intended to kite surf sometime on the trip, and spending the hour skimming through my Thailand book it didn’t appear we were going to have any other good opportunities. This was the spot.

I told Jose I was gonna stay here and I would meet him in Saigon. Not surprisingly he was not pleased with me but complied. I was on my own.

Referencing my book, I checked out a couple backpacker places that were recommended but they were all full. Just as I was about to give in for a $30 bed, I stumbled across a place with beds for 8 bucks. Dead cockroach on the floor getting eaten by ants- my type of place!

The place happened to by right by where I started, across from the bus stop. Settling in I checked out the beach. There were kite surfers everywhere.

Kite surfing was not cheap; first place I asked wanted 50 bucks an hour. What do you know, the cheapest place ended up being only 20 stops from my room, good old Mr Lee!

40 bucks an hour. I think when I was in Cartagena Columbia we paid about 350 for 8 hours, so about the same price here. One guy told me kite surfing is the same price all over the world.

I decided I would do two hours, one the first day and one the next morning before my bus (ended up pushing it to 1.5).

Since I had already done it before, he started me right in the water with a review of dragging myself through the water with the kite. Kite boarding is not an easy sport but I am determined to become good at it!

The next day, we kite boarded again and he got me up on the board. I rode for maybe 20 seconds on the board until I crashed it and got it tangled up in the buoy lines. Lesson over! 😦

It was different (in a good way) because the instructor here versus Columbia came in the water with me. He would hold on to my harness and drag with me in the water til I got the hang of it. When I was out by myself he put a walkie talkie in my helmet so could give instruction from the shore.

To kill the rest of the morning I walked around town. There was definitely a crocodile theme here but I never got around to trying it.

There were crocodile wallets, shoes, you name it. There were also lots of pearls necklaces etc for sale. There was a big Russian population here as well.

There were some pretty sweet beach bars I didn’t get around to checking out.

Mui Ne was a pretty sweet place and you could definitely spend a few days here. I was tempted to stay another day but I gave Jose my word I was coming back the next day. We are planning to cross in to Cambodia tomorrow but I am fairly confident our visas won’t be ready yet so I will be wasting the day away in the city instead of on this beautiful beach town.

I finished up the day with a couple mangoes on a beach chair. Perfect.