Day 69 and 70: Mistakes and Sand-dunes

Day 69 

I sleep so lightly last night that I hear every noise and about 4ish I hear a car come up the drive. "Wouldn't it be funny" I say to myself "If the driver has gotten the wrong day and that's our tour man" I chuckled to myself and roll over till I hear tap, tap. Oh no, I open the door to the night guard for the hotel. 

"Tour?" 

"No, tomorrow"

"No tour?"

"Tomorrow"

He seems to get it and I go back to bed until 5 minutes later there's another tap and it's the driver this time.

"You not want tour?"

"No we do, it's just it's tomorrow"

"Oh, you sure? I check my texts" pause whilst he scrolls "Oh yes, tomorrow! Sorry, I get too excited" I can't be mad at too excited, I wave him off then go back to sleep. Ben sleeps through it all.

After breakfast, as the beach is so rubbish, we hang out at the pool again. A lady from Lancashire (the place isn't important for the story, it's just her accent feels homely) stops me in the pool to tell me how much she loves my style, smug much :D We chat a bit about travels and she settles my fears even more about Saigon, apparently it's one of the cleanest places she's been. We lunch here again, sunbathe some more then go to play some pool. It's a good routine and must be working well as I win 3-2 again (27-20)

We go back to the hotel for dinner and I get to settle one of my cravings, home made lasagne...hmmm so so good. As its too windy for cards, we grab a chess board and I teach Ben crudely how to play, I see a new obsession starting.

Day 70 

My brain decided that we wouldn't wake up in time for the tour and I slept fitfully again until the alarm goes off at 4am for a 4.30 pick up. We dress quickly and it's a good job we do as at 4.10am the night porter comes and gets us again. We get into an old army style truck with a Singapore couple about our ages and set off. We pick up another couple on the way (I think Korean) and we jet off out of the town. 

We've been driving for about an hour and the sky is starting to lighten when the truck suddenly loses power and smells strongly of fuel. The driver tries to splutter further forward but it's having none of it and we settle ourselves to the fact we are going to be seeing the sun rise from the inside of a truck when another tour truck slows down and parks in front of us and gets out a rope. They're going to try and tow us, and slowly and very gingerly it seems to work till our replacement picks us up and speeds the last few minutes to the dunes so we don't miss out anymore. We have a little kerfuffle over the entrance as we know, and so do the rest of the jeep, know it meant to be free but a make shift guard won't let us pass till be pay, after a few minutes arguing we all click it's only 60p and grumblingy hand it over.

We hit the dunes just as the sun comes up and we get some fantastic pictures of the rays, I've included a few below.

We also have a go at bouncing down the sand dunes, we took enough pictures to make a gif, don't I look cute?

(Coming Soon)

Next up is the red dunes so named because they have orange sand (apparently it looks red at sun set) 

On the way back to Mui Ne village we stop off at the fishing village and I get a bit engrossed in watching the the haggling at the morning fish market. We also get to watch the laziness of the Vietnamese when it comes to walking when a guy rides his moped down the steep slope instead of taking the 40 stairs, how he didn't slip of his bike I don't know.

 The last bit of our tour is the Fairy Stream, which can't come too soon as I'm getting a bit peckish. You start by walking down a rubbish filled stream (not so appealing) until you turn a corner and you are confronted by beautiful red sand cliffs and odd shapes. We scramble up to the top to get a better view and it's really beautiful. 

On the walk back I get caught by a puppy who's decided that his breakfast this morning was going to be my hoodie, he was only tiny though and just playing.

We whizz back and grab breakfast before we catch our bus to Saigon, another sleeper. The journey whizzes by a a we arrive in Ho Chi Minh City (a city with two names) 6 hours later and it's nothing like I though it would be, everything is light and clean and the people are so friendly. Once our bags are dropped, our first thought is food. I've spotted an Indian resturant across from our hotel and I've got a really craving for Thali, oh it was so good, I've forgotten how yummy the food was in India. Once tummies are full,  we go off to explore and get caught up in what looks like is a travel agents convention showing off all the different parts of Vietnam by flashing bright lights and playing weird V-Pop. We walk till it overwhelms and then go to a bar for some cheesy sing alongs.