After 14 weeks continuously together since we left NYC and 8 weeks together travelling internationally, we decided to take a few days away from each other so as to have some independent time. This was our first scheduled opportunity for a break from each other, with others likely coming in the future in Thailand and India (when I will go to short yoga retreats while Rorie wanders around those countries doing whatever he does while I’m not there). In particular, this provided a good opportunity for us to briefly separate because there were two similar beach locations – Mui Ne, where I visited, and Nha Trang, where Rorie relaxed – that were roughly equidistant from our subsequent destination, Da Lat. Both cities were fine but neither was a “must see” location, so it made it easier for us each to skip one of them.
With that background information, this post is a little bit different. Rorie will write about his large beach city of Nha Trang, while I’ll write about my take on the small beach town of Mui Ne. There won’t be any of our beloved “editor’s notes,” but we’ll be sure to include extra snarky side comments and contradictory renditions of events in our next blog posts.
Nha Trang – by Rorie
Jess departed HCMC to head to Mui Ne around lunchtime, since her bus commute was only 5 hours long. My commute to Nha Trang, however, was closer to 12 hours long, so I opted to catch a much later overnight bus and, in turn, got stuck hanging around HCMC for around 9 hours longer than Jess. Given that we had pretty much canvassed the city prior to this, I didn’t have much to do with the time except hang around the central market and kill time in coffee shops. The amusing thing about the central market, where I needed to buy additional shorts for Jess (at her request), was how much less the vendors pestered me without her around. It’s like they were magnets, drawn to her fat wallet and weak impulse control for shopping. As soon as she disappeared, they hardly pestered me in the market. It was amazing. That alone provides me a ton of incentive to travel without Jess far more often!
My bus ride was long, but largely inconsequential. The only issue, unfortunately, is that I arrived extremely early into Nha Trang – closer to 6am, rather than the originally scheduled 8am. The bus dropped me off at an empty part of town, so I hailed down a motorbike driver to give me lift into town. He put my massive backpack in his lap between him and the handlebars, while I sat on the back with my daypack. For the low price of $1.25, we darted through the empty streets of Nha Trang while I navigated us by using Google Maps with my spare hand until he eventually found the discreet alley where my hotel was hidden. After waking up the night attendant, I was able to check-in and relax (read: pass out for a 3 hour nap) for a minute.
Once I awakened, I took stock of my whereabouts. Nha Trang, in a word, is a weird place. It’s a much larger beach town than where Jess was staying and has a proper town. What makes it weird is that it is an extremely popular vacation spot for Russians (rumor has it that there are direct flights from Nha Trang to Moscow), so all the street signs are in Vietnamese, English and Russian. There were almost exclusively Russian tourists everywhere and menus were as likely to have borscht on them as banh mi. Just weird.
Further, I happened to be in this beach town for a multiple day stretch when it was forecasted to rain the entire time. Awesome. Nailed it. As a result, my plan shifted from “hangout on the beach” to “hangout in various coffeeshops” for the better part of 3 days. Ultimately, there’s not much to write about as a result. I finished a book and a TV series I was watching on Netflix, caught up on a bunch of family calls and was able to watch several Utah Jazz basketball games. It was rather bucolic, in a sadly misanthropic sort of way. While not for everyone, I was delighted by how it turned out.
The one activity I did manage to do, however, was the Thap Ba Mud Baths, which are located right outside of Nha Trang. I arranged a shuttle service to take me back and forth for a whopping $3 roundtrip in the afternoon (I obviously had to watch my Jazz play in the morning) and, for a mere $8, had full access to all the delightful offerings of the resort. As the name emphasizes, this started with a mud bath, which involved me climbing into a small tub-esque thing with 6 other Russians while the Vietnamese workers blasted muddy water inside for us all to soak in. We were given roughly 15 minutes to soak in the mud, floating in it (it was buoyant, which is not a property I associate with mud) and rubbing it on our skin to avail ourselves of its dubious health benefits. We were then forced to wash off using unnecessarily powerful/painful hoses, before climbing into another tub (shared with 2 Chinese guys and a Russian couple) for 20 minutes of soaking in a hot mineral water bath. Finally, after that, we were ushered to the rest of the Thap Ba facilities, which included a waterfall (which you stand/sit under to have it beat down on your neck/shoulders for a relaxing pseudo-massage) and hot/cold pools for swimming and lounging about.
The entrance sign for the illustrious Thap Ba Mud Baths.
An example of the types of tubs where we’d all luxuriate in mud. Pure glamour, folks.
A partial view of the entire Thap Ba Mud Bath complex.
While Nha Trang was a weird city that I wouldn’t necessarily encourage other tourists to visit, it was a nice place to de camp for a few days and the mud baths were truly delightful. I was shocked by how much I enjoyed them and how relaxing they were for several hours, particularly at such a low cost.
Mui Ne – by Jess
Mui Ne is a strange little town on the coast of Vietnam, with lots of activities and a solid backpacker culture, but not much in the way of conveniences and relaxation. After about a 5 hour bus ride from Ho Chi Minh, I landed somewhere along the one main street of Mui Ne. The town is spread out along a long beach, and there’s pretty much just one road along the entire way. Depending on where you are along the road, things are either walkable and accessible, or not. Luckily, taxis and motorbikes frequent the strip, so hailing one to take you to the other end isn’t difficult. Mui Ne is known for being one of the premiere kitesurfing locations in Asia, if not the world. This is no mistake – large parts of the bay are wide, windy, and perfect conditions for the sport, which means that the water and skies are completely filled with kites almost every day. It’s quite a sight! Unfortunately, the wind means that there are huge waves and blowing sand, which means that the actual beach isn’t very nice. In fact, the one time I tried to sit on the sand I gave up after just a few minutes because the wind was driving sand into my skin so hard it was almost painful.
Kites on the beach and filling the air at Mui Ne
So if not for beach time, what else is there to do in Mui Ne? I considered taking kite surfing lessons, but these require at least 7-10 hours of lessons at a minimum to even be able to get out on the water, over the course of 3-5 days, and I didn’t have that kind of time. Instead I opted for a windsurfing lesson, which could be done in a 2-3 hour session and lets you get up on the board independently right away! This turned out to be an awesome decision, as I ended up with a private lesson in a sheltered portion of the bay with almost no waves, and my excellent and patient instructor Matt helped me confidently windsurf on my own within an hour or so, then refine my technique and learn to turn, tack upwind, and go faster all within a few hours! He also got very excited when I showed interest in the physics of windsurfing and we had a great time talking about air pressures and wind/sail angles to help me solidify why it all works. Other than getting rather sunburned during this endeavor, I had a great time and felt like I’d made good progress on a new skill.
With my noble steed after my windsurfing lesson
Beyond water sports, there are a few somewhat random but interesting natural sites around the town, so I signed up for a day tour through a hostel I found with a group of about 7 or 8 other backpackers from all over the world. This took us to Fairy Springs, a natural shallow stream through other-worldly sand and stone formations that seem completely out of place in a tropical beach location, but are stunning nonetheless. This was amusing as our driver just stopped the Jeep, gestured through a small archway, and left us to our own devices to explore with no context for what we were seeing or doing. Afterwards, we had a short stop overlooking the fishing village, the local portion of the beach where fisherman still use traditional Vietnamese round boats and nets. It’s picturesque, though I have a hard time understanding how there is enough sea life to sustain all of it! After this stop, our next two destinations were two different areas of sand dunes a short ways inland. This was also surreal, as I don’t typically associate desert-like sand dunes with palm trees and ocean in the distance, but that’s exactly what you get. At the first stop, a group of us chipped in for a sand Jeep and driver to take us on a bouncing, crazy roller-coaster ride over the dunes to a few different viewpoints. At the second stop, we were on our own two feet, and theoretically were supposed to get a sunset view (we’re pretty sure) but the clouds meant that wasn’t in the cards so we went back a little early.
Me walking through the stream at Fairy Springs (Photo credit: a fellow backpacker)
Crazy rock and sand formations at Fairy Springs
Martian landscapes at a beach town in Vietnam – who knew?
Overlooking the fishing village, filled with small local boats
Our group in the back of our Sand Jeep, trying to hold on
Our intrepid group on top of a sand dune
Desert sand with palm trees in the distance
The best part of the tour was meeting the group of people since I was traveling solo at this point. When we got back to the hostel, they and other backpackers they had met decided to all go out for a huge group dinner together, and they invited me to join. We traveled as a huge group to one of the small open-air restaurants that line the road and asked if they had room for a group of 21 people (!). I think the restaurant staff were a little scared, but so happy to have so many customers! We pushed together almost every table in the place and had a massive “family dinner” with all the new friends we had just met. At one point I counted 10 different nationalities at the table! This type of experience is so unique to backpacking travel, and something I was really happy to stumble into.
And, it led to the absolute strangest coincidental moment of the trip so far: A few seats down from me was a backpacker from Salt Lake City, Utah, who not only knew Rorie’s family but had actually met Rorie once or twice back in Utah! How crazy is that? We immediately messaged Rorie’s cousins to send them a photo of the two of us together. I don’t know if any “small world” moment will top that.
Our 21-person “family dinner”
The last note on Mui Ne that surprised me is that it is extremely popular with Russian tourists, to the point where there are entire restaurants and stores with Russian signs and menus (like Nha Trang, I would later learn). I even had some Vietnamese shopkeepers try to speak Russian to me instead of English, which was a strange moment. It didn’t really impact me or my experience there, but I thought it was an interesting note. As there’s not really much else to do in town unless you’re a kitesurfer or staying at a really fancy resort with pools and a spa (I was not), my couple of days were plenty of time in Mui Ne. All in all, I had a really nice time and I feel like I was able to fit in what I wanted! The only thing I might have added would be a better beach for relaxing on, but I’m sure I’ll get more of that later on in the trip. Next, it’s off to meet back up with Rorie in Da Lat!
A traditional round fishing boat on the beach in Mui Ne
