Thursday morning I taught and went out for a smoothie with Ngoc and Phu before catching a bus to Saigon. In Saigon I meant to get a snack for the road but ended up getting another smoothie. It was my first time getting a beverage from a street vendor there, because for some reason in Saigon I still hold onto the traveler’s precautions that I’ve otherwise long since thrown out the window. I got a mixed fruit smoothie, which ended up including pomelo, soursop, passion fruit, and strawberries and was quite tasty. The cherry on top came when the vendor, who did not insist on speaking to me in English, complimented my Vietnamese at the end of our exchange.
I met Brittanye at the next bus company, and the two of us got on the bus to Mui Ne. It was my first time bussing north from Saigon, and even though the scenery wasn't that exciting, Brittanye and I had more than enough to talk about to fill the five hour ride. She got off in Phan Thiet, where she lives, which is about 20km from Mui Ne. Mui Ne is essentially a resort town laid out along one long street, whereas Phan Thiet is where the 'real people' (non tourists) live. When I got to my hotel I was a little concerned to see shards of glass covering the front steps and entryway, but it was a big enough place and everything else seemed fine so I didn't worry too much. I asked the receptionist to recommend a Vietnamese place for dinner and he did -- but when I went outside I realized that he had merely recommended the restaurant next door to the hotel. Furthermore, after I ordered, it was clear that it was not deserving of his recommendation. I did a little bit of wandering before going back to my room, and it felt like I had accidentally wandered into a tropical Russia. I was glad I had been mentally reviewing Russian prior to my arrival; it looked like it might come in handy.
2.24.12
When I woke up on Friday I headed straight to the beach. I bought corn from a woman selling it on the beach, and I was happy to conduct the whole transaction in Vietnamese. Usually, if I'm in a tourist area, Vietnamese people respond in English even if you initiate in Vietnamese, but she didn't. After I bought my corn, two Russian women approached me. (In Mui Ne, it is a very safe bet to assume that any foreigner you see is Russian.) One of them stopped me and asked what sounded like 'chupa chup?' This was not something I understood. I stood there blankly trying to decide whether to say that I was not Russian in Russian, and she asked 'how much?' in English. I replied '20' in English but she didn't understand, so I said '20' in Russian. Or I might have said '12'. But in those few minutes I felt very multilingual.
Brittanye met me for lunch and we tried our luck with another Vietnamese restaurant. Because it was Friday and it is now lent, I was careful about my protein selection. I'm used to avoiding beef, pork, and chicken on Fridays during lent, but as I looked at the menu I ran up against a lot of question marks. Where do lizard, snake, turtle, and frog fall on the permissible meat scale? I opted for squid, instead.
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| I was not interested in paying for crap, either |
Our destination for the day was the Fairy Stream. It had been recommended to me, but I knew nothing about it other than the name of the place and a picture I'd seen in my hotel elevator. We arrived at the entry point, hired our local teenage guide, shed our shoes, and stepped into the fairy stream. It was a shallow, sandy bottomed stream. We rounded a bend and we entered something that looked like a miniature model of the southwestern US. Water flowed from some unknown source and it oozed out of the sides of the gully, mixing and carrying the many different colors of sediment. It was a playground of color and texture and it felt great underfoot, too.
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| Surprise! |
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| baby crabs! |
Brittanye and I met her coworker, Hien, for dinner at a seafood place in Phan Thiet. She ordered scrambled eggs with oysters, scallops on the shell, rice crust with a spicy sauce, amazingly delicious shrimp, and fried rice with garlic.
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| Scrambled eggs, eaten on the crackers in the background |
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| Scallops |
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| Brittanye, Hien, and I |
We went back to Mui Ne and got dolled up for a night out. I got to wear the dress I bought when Violet visited and dance the night away.
2.25.12
Saturday morning started with what else but more time on the beach. Later, Brittanye and I lunched at an Italian place with a brick oven pizza. I feasted on the best pizza I've had in six months, one of the best since leaving Italy. Much like my overall Mui Ne experience, it was the perfection I didn't even imagine I could hope to find.
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| Mushrooms, anchovies, and yum |
Our two sights scheduled for the day were the red sand dunes and the white sand dunes. The red ones were closest and consequently our first stop. We rented sleds (aka sheets of plastic) to slide down the dunes, but quickly found that it was easier said than done. By then we had already waved away the children who offered to teach us how for some more 'tip moneys' so I tried to watch them as they helped other tourists and steal their secrets. I figured out that they dug down to the damp sand and sprinkled that over the slide trajectory, but I didn't manage to do so as effectively as they did. You can watch my semi-successful attempt here.
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| Refueling, Vietnam style |
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| The Vietnam Record Book Center acknowledges that these dunes change shape the most in Vietnam |
We pressed on to the farther, bigger, and more impressive white dunes, another 30 or 40 minutes away. The whole ride was breathtaking, and again I felt like I was somewhere almost familiar. The red sands accompanied for most of the way on one side, while the beach bordered the other side of the road. We were occasionally blocked by herds of cows. Prickly pear cacti dotted the landscape and I even saw a pink house with turquoise trim that looked like it belonged in Georgia O'Keeffe's Southwest. We also passed a large Vietnamese cemetery. In my area tombs are usually on family land, so only a handful dot the landscape at a time. Here, it was a swath of tombs.
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| Passing the fisherman's harbor |
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| Moooo...ve |
When I finally saw the white dunes, I discovered that they are next to a large lake. It was an unexpected element adding to the beauty of the scene. We made it just in time for sunset, as we had more or less planned, and we sat at the crest of a dune to watch the sun sink behind the clouds on the other side of the lake.
I did some wandering and scooted my way down the steep side of a dune to get to the lake below. Surprisingly, most of the people and ATVers left as the sun began to set, and soon the only sounds we could hear were the bugs and the waterfowl. I was overcome with a sense of peacefulness, total contentment, and gratitude. I am always, at least vaguely, appreciative of what an opportunity it is to be living and working here in Vietnam, but standing there on the dunes brought it into sharp relief. There was only one reason I was experiencing that particular moment in that particular spot in creation, and it is because I was fortunate enough to be a Fulbright ETA in Vietnam.
2.26.12
On Sunday morning Brittanye and I hit up the last sight on my list, the Cham towers, three small ruins on a hill between Mui Ne and Phan Thiet.
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| One of the towers |
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| You could see another, even bigger cemetery from the hill. |
We spent the rest of the morning exploring Phan Thiet before it was time for me to catch the bus to Saigon. The bus showed up late but once we got rolling I settled in for the five hour ride and started grading quizzes. I wondered if my high post-trip spirits were inflating the grades I was giving, but I was sure they wouldn't mind. I enjoyed passing fields full of children flying shark-shaped kites, but my enjoyment waned as it became more and more apparent that there was no way I would get back to Saigon in time to catch the last bus to Ben Tre. The ride ended up taking about six hours, and I had to spend the night in Saigon.
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