...was not the beach holiday we'd hoped for! After a hot and tiring train and bus ride to get there, leaving Saigon at 6am and arriving after 3pm, we checked in and grabbed our swimwear - only to find the entirety of the long strip of golden sand had become one giant kite-surfing resort.
Kite-surfing, we admitted, looked like brilliant fun - athletic thrill-seekers leap from the waves on boards strapped to their feet, their arms and torsos balancing the pull of huge bright kites. We figured; can't beat 'em, join 'em - but at $180 for a 5 hour lesson, during which you don't actually touch the water, we thought we'd save our funds for a diving course later on. And the silver-tongued salesman we chatted to was much more convinced than Matt or I that the motion wouldn't inflame his knee injury.
The salesman, incidentally, told us that he was a boat person, and had lived in San Jose for years until returning to Vietnam a few years ago. I was keen to know more, but he moved on to other customers. Since then I read a simple but poignant fictional novel about the Vietnamese boat people called 'A Boat To Nowhere', written by a non-Vietnamese American called Maureen Crane Wartski. She says she likes to write stories based on the coutries she visits in SE Asia. Quite a bold thing to attempt I think, but she does it well and with unpatronising empathy.
Anyway, all Mui Ne had to offer other than the unusable beach was a strip of bars and restaurants, sort of more bijou-packer than back-packer, catering to the new and increasing flood of Russian tourists that are streaming in to beach resort towns across the country. Many of the menus are now in Viet, English and Russian.
We cut our stay short and skipped town the next morning for Da Lat...
Love, E.
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