From Mui Ne to Saigon!

Hi there!
I have lots to catch up with! first Mui Ne. It was a road full of resorts that did not have any structure or charm. But the scenery was spectacular. Mui Ne is famous for its sand dunes!! there was red ones and white ones... quite beautiful! and a little stream called the "fairy stream", that you could walk up (it was really shallow and the bottom was beach sand!) and enjoy magnificent sand formations all around, the water had eroded the red mountains... there was muddy bits and arches... it is very difficult to explain, but quite unusual!never seen anything like that. And the dunes were humongous! the vietnamese used plastic boards to slide down, like snow slopes! there was a lot of people there too, because it has been the Independence Day! and it was bank holiday, of course.

But I was actually looking forward to going to Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City, as it is called now). A little bit apprehensive too... when we arrived, in the evening, it was raining so hard that some streets were flooded! imagine the hundreds of motorbikes and bicycles trying to drive through! But we, on our big bus, made it through... Saigon is very different from Hanoi, somehow they seem opposites... people seem friendlier here, they take an interest in you, not only in your money (or so it would seem...). We were quite lazy the first day and decided to let two cyclos take us around the city, to the main sights. It was very enjoyable, they struggled with English but were so kind as to help us cross the road everytime , they literally took us by the hand, like little children (you know how it is a mission here, no pedestrian crossings whatsoever, and not even traffic lights most of the times, so the traffic never stops... you have to cross through it! There are also policemen that take you through the traffic, honestly!).

About the war museum I am not going to tell you much, I could not handle it, had to get out. And then I met this very nice vietnamese girl tourist guide, who became our good friend, Hanh. There is not much more to see in Saigon, it is more the atmosphere that I like. I loved sitting down in the street cafes with a tasty vietnamese ice coffee, watching the world go by... I could have stayed in Saigon. We went out with our friend to vietnamese places, I even had a massage on the spot, in a pub! and by a very nice young boy!! Another nice thing about Saigon was that we were reunited with our friend Katie (although we are appart again!).

We also went on a tour to the Mekong delta. That was also interesting, although very much chewed for us... took a big boat to transfer to a smaller boat so that we could drive through the narrower streams to go from island to island... tried some freshly made coconut candy! delicious! some homemade honey... held a 10 kg snake around my neck!!. etc. took an even smaller boat and paddled through even narrower passages to another island and listened to traditional music while tasting local fruit (dragon fruit, passion fruit, caqui, mango, papaya...) and that was it! it could have been longer if we had had the time! but we are running out of it, and it was time to go to Cambodia!!!! the last country in our list of must!! where we are now...