Sand Dunes and Fairy Streams!

So we awoke early around 7am to pack and check out for 8am so our walk down to the backpackers wasn’t in the heat of the day. We dumped our bags then headed for breakfast at Lam Tong then went to Indochina Resort to use their pool again up until 1pm when our trip to the Dunes started. We didn’t see our guy at first so we just went in and swam, then we saw him and he was like, ah you’re back, please use my pool as long as you like! So we did...until super-bitch came up!

Around midday one of the woman bar staff decided to come and accuse us of using the pool without paying 100,000 dong.  So we tried telling her again and again we’d spoken to the guy who owned the resort and he’d told us we could use it for free. But she just played the ‘today I choose not to understand English’ ploy and just did NOT get what we were saying. Then she started getting all hissy... “Ooooh pretty girl, oooh I’m so pretty, oooh I’m so white, means I can try and get away with anything...” blah blah – oh so you DO understand English then cos you can speak it pretty well when being condescending and racist! So I got a little annoyed and started giving it back to her, then we decided hell, why put up with this, it’s only an hour til we leave for the dunes so we’ll leave and have lunch. So while we were leaving, we contemplated pushing her in the pool to stop her whining, but thought better of it – she may have ‘friends’, or worse, her own machete or summin lol. So we just left the resort and vowed to give Indochina a really bad review on trip advisor!

So we had lunch then waited for our 4x4 war jeeps to turn up. Then we headed off first to ‘Fairy Springs’ which was a small stream and waterfall that flowed through the red sand dunes on the outskirts of town. We were told it was a 40min walk through the stream to a waterfall, so we walked, the scenery was stunning, and we walked, took photo’s, then everyone decided to turn back as we were getting what we thought was nowhere. But then we were told to keep going by a guide, so we turned back, and kept walking, walk through a very deep part of the stream and kept walking...and eventually we happened upon the waterfall...which was a trickle!! Lol Well that was worth it...then we had to walk alllll the way back again, which had already taken us 45mins!

We then took a short drive out to the white sand dunes, passing the fishermen’s village along the way for photos and some stunning coastal scenery. Once at the dunes we could hire out a sand sled – so we hired one to share as it was quite expensive. Then began our trek to the top of the highest dune, which at 3pm was a mission and SO SO hot! But we made it after stopping for a few pictures along the way. We then just spent our time sitting at the top of the dunes, admiring the view, taking pictures and...trying out sand-sledding! We had a go each halfway, brought it back up for the other to try, then decided to go down on it together, which hadn’t been tested by everyone else on the dune yet, so we were the main attraction at this time. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on us as we got ourselves positioned on this flimsy piece of plastic, Maura up front, me behind – which was a mission! Then it was push-off time...we got a little stuck. Meanwhile everyone is still watching and laughing. Then we managed to get moving...which was slow at first, then got faster, then got slower again, then just stopped altogether about 3 quarters of the way down. So what did we do to finish off our little show? Rolly-polly’s down the sand dune! ERROR – Sand everywhere! It was all over us, so we spent the next part of our journey to the red sand dunes, trying to get rid of said sand.

The last part of our tour was then the red sand dunes, where we would spend watching the sunset, so we climbed yet more dunes and sat and chilled watching what was left of the sunset (by this point it had started getting cloudy so the sunset wasn’t really happening). Then got back in our jeep and headed back to the hostel. We then had a few hours to kill until our night bus to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). So we had showers, had a nice Indian down the strip, then went back to chill at Mui Ne Backpackers until 1pm. I did some blogging and skyped the parents. Our bus was 45mins late so we ended up setting off at 1.45am, then it was 5-6hrs of diazepam-aided sleep until HCMC in the early morning.