Monday 11 March 2013

A local nightmare to Mui Ne!

So today we were headed to Mui Ne at 1pm, we packed and had breakfast with the group before saying goodbye - would maybe bump into Peter again along the backpacker trail in Australia sometime as he's taken time out from work to travel his own country - why not when you have Australia on your doorstep?! So we all exchanged Facebook details to keep in contact as it had been a great couple of days.

Then the others headed off for some more sightseeing as they were getting a night bus and we headed down to the lake for some food and ice cream before the bus. Then we waited an age for what we assumed was our pickup to transfer us to the bus, but had an argument with the hotel reception lady as the bus was at 1pm and it still hadn't arrived by 12.50pm. But it turned out we'd been fed the wrong information, and after what seemed like an age she finally answered our main question - are we getting a shuttle or will the actual bus pick us up? Which was, the actual bus was picking us up. So we waited a little longer and at 1.20 it turned up - it was the smallest bus ever! Was basically one step up from a mini-van, and guess what? There were no more seats left, and no luggage compartment, so our bags went up front with the driver, and our butts went on the fold-out emergency chairs in the middle aisle of the bus. Yay! We'd been cheated yet again by the Vietnamese, by loading us onto a local bus, instead of the tourist bus we'd paid for - ah Vietnam, the land of broken promises strikes again! So the whole 4 hours (well by the time we'd dropped off a few locals in some random town, and a few boxes at the local supermarket, it was around 5-6hrs) were spent sweating, as quoting our tour lady yesterday 'Da Lat does not do aircon', sitting on uncomfy seats round winding, death trap roads. Our 'toilet break' was a bush, drop and squat situation and we shared the bus with a loud Vietnamese family with twin babies - the joy! Saw a massive fight between some locals on the way into Mui Ne.

Arrived in Mui Ne, a quieter beach town than Nha Trang, at around 6pm, and we took the first guesthouse we came to, which luckily was the place our bus stopped outside. It was $10 for a twin room and fan, not too bad. Went for a meal at a Lonely Planet recommended restaurant by the Mui Ne Backpackers, which was super cheap - yay we'd found our new local. Went for a wonder in Mui Ne - which is literally just one long road of shops and resorts along the coast and checked my Visa situation. It was running out on the 16th March and I wanted to know if I could extend it so we could spend some time on the Mekong in Vietnam, but everywhere was telling us it would take 7 days - so I decided to wait until HCMC to sort it. Then we just went to bed early as we were shattered and was looking forward to a day of lying and frying on the beach tomorrow...travelling can really take it out of you and we'd been doing it GAP-style (tour group speed) since Hoi An so it'd be nice to chill for a couple of days!

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