Phan Thiet and Mui Ne

This little guy thought we were very interesting

We took our first train journey of our round the world adventure aboard the Phan Thiet Express as dawn broke across Ho Chi Minh City on Friday morning.  The experience of getting tickets was not as simple as one might have thought.

Most advice we received about booking train tickets in Vietnam was not to try and do it ourselves.  Too regularly, this seems to be the advice dished out to all tourists, for fear that we will be ripped off, overcharged, or that the tickets themselves would not even exist.  In retrospect, for buying tickets from the train station, it probably could have been one of the easier things we have had to do on our own.  However, I say this in retrospect.

We picked one of an apparent two choices.  Ms Anh, one of Mum's former Ho Chi Minh City/USQ graduates, who comes from Phan Thiet, offered to buy us the tickets, and there was an agency that could print the tickets in Hanoi, send them to Ho Chi Minh City, and then have them delivered to us in District 2.  Given the ridiculous logistics, Ms Anh won - but only came out about 10c cheaper per ticket.  

In the end, while we were at the station, there was plenty of English signage, and I am sure that we would not have had too many problems buying the tickets for ourselves, when armed with the actual price.

Comfortable seats on the Phan Thiet Express
 (with power outlets)

Number 9 bus leaves from the Phan Thiet Station 
and stops regularly along the beachfront all the way to Mui Ne

Of course, buying the tickets was just the start of the weekend.  Phan Thiet is a popular destination because of its proximity to a giant (and comparatively newly constructed) reclining Buddha, beautiful White and Red sand dunes, the Fairy Spring/Canyon, its seafood options and markets and its beachside location, perfect for kite surfing on the south-east coast.

We were picked up at 4.30am on Saturday morning by a revitalised US jeep and a group of other tourists.  

Sunrise at the White Dunes

With little communication from our driver, our jeep was off, flying northwards towards the smaller town of Mui Ne, with the beach somewhere off to our right, invisible in the darkness.  We screamed past other jeeps packed up with tourists, our driver was apparently keen to be there first.  It probably took us a little under an hour to get to the White Sand Dunes where we had to pay the entrance fee (despite paying for the tour), luckily, we had fair warning on this from a guidebook - it's certainly worth other travellers trying to confirm these sorts of details at the time of booking, so that there's no nastiness.

Meandering through the White Dunes

With few instructions, we had no idea where it would be best to see the sunrise, so we had to make it up for ourselves.  Opting to move away from the noisy 4x4's many used to explore the dunes, we found ourselves a nice place, all to ourselves, with others less keen to walk far from the dropoff point. The white dunes were definitely worth a visit, even if you have visited sane dunes elsewhere.

Kat awaiting the sunrise

Our second visit was to the Red Dunes.  Much closer to town and more popular with tourists and locals alike for that reason.  

Many more locals (and touts) at the Red Sand Dunes

Apparently the sands' colour change with the seasons, which I think is pretty incredible.  For the record, I think they're red at the moment, Kat yellow. You can sandboard at the Red Dunes if it takes your fancy. As the ride down is rather short we left it for others to enjoy, although it was interesting to see an elderly lady doing it herself, to convince us how much fun it could be.  Although the dunes appeared tame, Kat's 2011 temporary blinding-after-a-sand-board-stacking-experience in Peru is still fresh in her mind. If you had to choose between the dunes, Kat would opt for the White Sand Dunes.

Anything and everything a fisherman can unload

Our jeep also took us to a fishing village where the catch is shelled, gutted, traded or all three right there on the beach, before being thrown on the back of a motorbike and driven off to it final destination - even if the motorbike needs to drive up the cement embankment overlooking the beach.

Fishing village (with escaping motorbike, 
racing up the concrete embankment)

We were taken by the Fairy Spring, our next stop on this journey of the coast.  This is an innocuous little stream that is only 1 or 2 cm deep and you can walk up it.  While at first it just seems like a little tourist trap, after you turn a few corners, you are faced with an amazing scene of red sand combined with exposed limestone stretching away in front. It was certainly worth the minuscule entry fee. There is also a cafe that looked quite nice and you could easily spend some restful time here.

The Fairy Spring

Unfortunately Kat became sick following the tour (which finished about 11am) and spent a rather miserable 6 hours lying down in our hotel room. We had been sharing food so we had to put it down to a smoothie she had consumed the evening before. Luckily our hotel (Hai Yen Family Hotel, booked through Agoda) was very comfortable and before long Kat felt ready to jump in the sea and then spend some time in the pool. 

View from our room

There we met a large Vietnamese family that were very keen to take photos of us (some surreptitiously, and others more conspicuously) - they had rented a van to bring the whole lot of them to Phan Thiet for the weekend.

HCMC family on a weekend in Phan Thiet

Costs for things that matter:

• $US32.80 (656 000VND) for 2 return tickets HCMC-Phan Thiet
• $US5 for a xe om driver to take me to meet Ms Anh and home again
• $US21 per night - Hai Yen Family Hotel

The rest of the weekend we spent beached, eating or reading. As it turns out, I'm better at these things than I am at buying train tickets!

The Red Dunes of Mui Ne

Say Ohm!

Having been burnt from an experience with a nasty dodgy taxi driver, I was more than content to spend a few days hanging out in the relative safety of Tim and Steph's District 2.  Hiding from the heat of the day in coffee shops, catching up on world news and some less than important things (like the ongoing Australian government leadership controversy).

But eventually there would come a time when this little traveller would actually need to see more of Ho Chi Minh City than the cool sanctuary of air-conditioned western coffee shops and smell aromas other than Italian coffee beans.

Traffic in Vietnam probably has more than its fair share of dedicated blog posts, so I'll leave it at the fact that there are 90 million people in Vietnam, and most of them get about my motorbike.  The streets are full, loud and dangerous for riders and pedestrians alike.  Of course, as most people get about by motorbike, it stands to reason that it is also one of the most cost-effective ways to get about.

Kat, having previously experienced both enjoyable and heart-stopping rides on the back of motorcycles in Vietnam on her 2008 trip, usually opted for the relatively safe taxi option for the half-hour journey to volunteering each day.  Safe, as long as you never opened your eyes or looked at where the taxi drivers' eyes were focused (usually on a mobile phone) - on this day, I rode with her, to see the orphanage, and explore the area.  For the first time since arrival, I finally put together my cheat sheet of Vietnamese words (1-10, please, thankyou, sorry) and was determined that to get home, this day would be the one in which I would take a xe om (pronounced "say ohm") and to be honest, a Buddhist mantra is probably desirable if not required for this activity.

Finding xe om drivers is usually not an issue of how, but more an issue of saying "yes".  Probably thousands of men spends their days dozing atop their parked motorbikes on street corners, always with a second helmet, waiting for a customer to approach.  Thousands more hound you at every turn, "motorbike?", "taxi?", "where you going?".  However, in the heat of the day (between 10 & 2) most people are already where they are going, so I caught my prospective driver napping.

Still nervous from the dodgy taxi incident, but determined to bring some local language into play, I made a cautious approach.  My prospect was one of two men in their late forties hanging out of the corner.  The first excitement lay in determining the actual destination.  Having prepared for this moment like a university exam, I was persistently trying to tell them that I wanted to go to "Dinh Độc Lập", but without the capability of forming complex Vietnamese sounds correctly, it came out as "din dock lap", which I think is probably wrong.  Mainly wrong, because we could only get universal agreement when I said "Reunification Palace".

With that issue sorted, next came the price.  As anything worthwhile, some healthy negotiation is both expected and necessary (don't hop on without agreement first).  This also hit a snag.  Capable only of counting to 6 from the top of my head (after all, it was only university exam-like preparation), negotiating amounts in the range of 50-70 000 dong became all to much for me to handle.  To the great mirth of my two prospects, many hand gestures and waves and we concluded on a price of 60 000VND.  They managed to work out which of them would drive me through some non-verbal queue I never witnessed, and as they helped me on with a helmet, they asked "American?, New Zealand?, Australia?"  Receiving a solid nod and a thumbs up at confirming my nationality and therefore passing some obscure test, we were off, as I tentatively pondered the clause on the insurance policy stating "under no circumstances are you covered in the event of a motorcycle accident".

From what I had read, your local xe om driver is a key to unlocking the city.  They know the back roads you would never go down yourself and that taxis can't fit in.  They know every street and alleyway in the city, and even if they don't, have the local language skills to work it out.  My driver "Nam" was an utter professional, living up to this standard, but at the same time, I was completely comfortable at all times.  Never did he pull in front of a truck or bus or weave in and out of traffic, and always accelerated at a reasonable speed.  The only issue was that because he was so short, each time we slowed down, I almost broke my nose.

Nam says "OK thankyou", as he drives away

And so my first time on a xe om took me to a fairly interesting visit at the Reunification Palace. (Though I would have to say I enjoyed my time with Nam more, and I can't say that for most of the xe oms I have taken since!) I learnt about the significance of another more important entrance through the same gates, done by a number of North Vietnamese tanks on April 30, 1975.  Back then, it was known as the Presidential Palace.

Incredible video footage of this historic moment was taken by an Australian Neil Davis (1975), who reportedly stayed in Saigon because he hadn't yet picked up a safari suit he was having made.

If internet comments are anything to go by, this moment continues to be a source of national pride and disappointment, a happy/sad moment, all depending on your political and historical point of view.  For an insight into some near-sighted American AND Vietnamese patriotism, read the comment sections (some as recent as 3 months ago) on youtube of any of the Neil Davis footage of this moment.

Tank 843's significant arrival

Please keep off the grass