chefmaison

After a good nights rest at Myhoa Lagoon Kiting town (we really needed it) and a tasty breakfast we hit the road again to go further South in the direction of Mui Ne. We first made a stop in Phan Rang to visit the 14th century Cham temple built on a hill. Like everywhere else the Vietnamese tourists all arrived dressed up or rented a costume there to take (very posed) pictures of themselves without really looking at the temples…

We too the DT701 coastal road and took a smaller road off to the left to see the seaweed beach (Cánh Đồng Rong Biển Ninh Thuận), but it was high tide so no seaweed… the rest of this smaller road was lined on both sides with kilometers of shrimp farms and a lot of garbage everywhere. This is where the shrimps (scampis) are farmed that we find deep frozen in our supermarkets… not a pretty sight.

The Southern part of the DT701 coastal road was really beautiful and actually prettier than DT702 road we drove the first day. We first passed the Red Sand dunes and parked on one the side of the road to climb them. Here we were all alone contrary to the Sand dunes close to Mui Ne. We then passed a green mountainous landscape with boulders everywhere and one beautiful bay after the other. In Can Na both sides of the road were salt fields.

We had a great lunch of Bun Bo (noodle soup with beef) in a small roadside restaurant. The next part was a long stretch of highway, until we joined the coastal road again and saw the first white Dunes of which we visited the less touristy part on foot. And a bit further we saw the crowds visiting the touristy parts of the white dunes, driving with colorful jeeps and quads through the sand. 

Around 5:30 pm we arrived at Coco cottages where we will stay two nights. Our bums will thank us for this day without long motorbike rides. We took a refreshing dip in the pool and took a light dinner at the hotel before returning to our room for some well deserved rest.

Our day in Mui Ne was to be a day of rest after two days on the motorbike, and before a long motorbike drive up to Da Lat in the mountains the next day. It is a 165 km drive, and will take I guess 6 hours on the motorbike. And it might rain and if it does we will have to stop and take shelter, tropical rains can be fierce. So in Mui Ne we would just chill, read, rest, eat, swim, sleep… and enjoy the nice surroundings.

Mui Ne is not really our vibe, lots of beach side development, hotels, resorts, restaurants, bars… Mui Ne also seems to be slowly disappearing, the sea is eroding the beach at a very fast pace, hotels and resorts build concrete embankments (like the one we are staying), others use huge sandbags sometimes stretching ten meter into the sea (some call them monsters), boulders, rocks or concrete tetrapods. But it cannot stop de destructions of the beach, swimming pools and bungalows built on the beachside while visitors coming to a beachside resort expect long stretches of white sand next to the blue ocean…

We went out for a Banh Mi for lunch (a Vietnamese ‘sandwich’ on a French style baguette ), while sitting out a tropical rain shower, and to withdraw some cash. In the evening we went out for dinner in a really nice restaurant in a nearby resort (Cham garden restaurant) set in a beautiful lush garden.