Sand Sliding and Saigon Beer Drinking

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Trip Start Dec 31, 2005 Trip End Jan 21, 2006 Next
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  Mui Ne, Vietnam
Tuesday, January 3, 2006

Arrived in Saigon on new years eve a very tired dude after not being able to sleep more than 45 minutes on the plane. Fortunately I was able to get in 2 hour sleep at the hotel in the afternoon so was okay for new years.

Our new years was spent with a friend of dave's phong. Dave had instructed him at flight school. Phong was a great guy and he took us out to a nice bar. We spent the night downing 'Saigon' beer and dancing to a cover band and music. For some reason new years eve (chuc mong noi moi) for Vietnamese people involves riding around on their bikes drunk all night. So the streets were packed. We managed to meet a heap of characters. Two danish guys who were trying to take pictures of them sticking their finger in peoples ears across the world. I was their Saigon person. We also attracted a huge following of Vietnamese kids who enjoyed our crazy dancing and singing. As I was pretty tired the night ended around 1:30am, but was a heap of fun.

The next day I was still pretty tired, but hey there is no stopping us on our quest to make it to Sapa before the 20th. So we hired a bus (one of the benefits of such a large group) and went on our way to Mui Ne. Mui Ne is where I am writing from now. Its a lovely fishing town that is quickly becoming a major tourist destination. Its famous for its huge sand dunes. Now these sand dunes are unbelievable, they stretch for miles and are beautiful to look at. The popular spare time activity is to slide down the dunes on a piece of rubber (old coca cola commercial anyone?). That was pretty mental, especially going head first and getting a face full of sand.

The first night in Mui Ne I was still kind of tired from the plane trip so I went off on a quiet walk by myself. Or at least thats what I intended. Instead I met a huge group of Saigon locals who were on a holiday in Mui Ne. They had an enormous fire and bbq. They asked me to come join them and I spent the next few hours singing karoake (they only knew the choruses, was so funny, they just hummed the rest) and drinking red wine with ice!?!

Last night I met a group of 4 bavarians (they don't like being called Germans) who kept us up till 4am drinking rum. All we did was scream 'Prost!' and drink, was awesome.

So now I am sitting in an Internet Cafe in Mui Ne (a little drunk) about to head home for an early night as we are off to Nha Trang tomorrow. The rest of the group is not interested in the party boats, but that isn't stopping me. I figure I can just go alone and meet people. Am really looking forward to it.

Hope everyone is well.
John

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Crazy traffic in Saigon on NYE	Dancing in the street on NYE in Saigon	Drinks on New Years Eve	Drinks on NYE in Saigon on the side of the road
Fishing boats in Mui Ne	In the pool in Mui Ne	Me in a Jeep	Mui Ne
On the street in Saigon	Sand Dunes in Mui Ne	Sand Surfing in Mui Ne	The girls with their roses

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