Mui Ne
When we got to Mui Ne, we were looking forward to seeing a nice beach again. Wasn’t the case here, beach was not that nice, so we ended up finding a hotel with a pool, where we spent most of our 4 days here.
We ended up meeting a few other couples, some Germans and Brits, so decided to go with them to rent a scooter for the day and check out the sand dunes that are famous in Mui Ne. We ended up going to the white dunes (there’s red ones also), which turned out to be really cool. The dunes were massive, and in our Vietnam travels have seen a lot of dry hot deserts throughout the country, never would have known it. You could rent a plastic sheet from a kid and slide down about 110-120 feet slide, and really steep. We found the best way to slide down was on our stomachs, problem was we’d end up with a mouthful of sand by the time we got to the bottom. Was worth it though!
We also thought it would be a good idea to try and get a round of golf in. We always talked about doing it in Asia, and looked up the course in Mui Ne. It seemed really nice, not too difficult or anything, and not a bad price. So we showed up at about 2pm thinking it would be cool enough out. There was no one else on the course so we got on right away. They also provided us with our own personal caddies (2 vietnamese girls). Didn’t mind, they were nice and helpful, but kept us honest with our scores...which was a bad thing!(I think Kyle’s caddie got extremely tired of raking all the sand traps the whole round!!!) I think Kyle and I both golfed the worst we have...EVER. We only did 9 holes and that was MORE than enough. It turned out to be a very tough course, and realllly HOT. I don’t think either of us have sweated that much since we’ve been in SE Asia. Oh well, we can say we golfed seaside in Vietnam at least. Our scores will never be shared!
Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)
We had talked to other travellers who had been to Saigon, and almost all of them recommended a short visit. So we ended up only staying 2 nights there, and spent 1 day hitting the sites. We went to the Cu Chi Tunnels just outside of the city. This is how the Viet Cong hid from the US bombing during the Vietnam war. Was crazy to see how they had miles of underground tunnel systems – the tunnels were very small, the only way we actually were able to crawl through them was because they had been made bigger after the war, for tourists to be able to fit through. We also saw all the “booby traps” set up by the Vietnamese and were able to fire a gun at the shooting range. Kyle chose the M16 – was very loud! Funny to see a video on how the US tried everything to get into these tunnels, but could not for the life of them figure it out during the war.
After the Cu Chi Tunnels, we went to the War Remnants Museum. Was very shocking and disturbing. We read about the effects of the Agent Orange (apparently the most toxic chemical to that date) sprayed by the US during the war, and saw how it is still affecting people today. The chemical totally deforms people from birth in ways you can’t imagine. We saw a lot of shocking photography of the war, a lot of it was disturbing, but at the same time it opened our eyes and made us realize how lucky we are to live in such a safe and peaceful country.
When we got to Mui Ne, we were looking forward to seeing a nice beach again. Wasn’t the case here, beach was not that nice, so we ended up finding a hotel with a pool, where we spent most of our 4 days here.
We ended up meeting a few other couples, some Germans and Brits, so decided to go with them to rent a scooter for the day and check out the sand dunes that are famous in Mui Ne. We ended up going to the white dunes (there’s red ones also), which turned out to be really cool. The dunes were massive, and in our Vietnam travels have seen a lot of dry hot deserts throughout the country, never would have known it. You could rent a plastic sheet from a kid and slide down about 110-120 feet slide, and really steep. We found the best way to slide down was on our stomachs, problem was we’d end up with a mouthful of sand by the time we got to the bottom. Was worth it though!
We also thought it would be a good idea to try and get a round of golf in. We always talked about doing it in Asia, and looked up the course in Mui Ne. It seemed really nice, not too difficult or anything, and not a bad price. So we showed up at about 2pm thinking it would be cool enough out. There was no one else on the course so we got on right away. They also provided us with our own personal caddies (2 vietnamese girls). Didn’t mind, they were nice and helpful, but kept us honest with our scores...which was a bad thing!(I think Kyle’s caddie got extremely tired of raking all the sand traps the whole round!!!) I think Kyle and I both golfed the worst we have...EVER. We only did 9 holes and that was MORE than enough. It turned out to be a very tough course, and realllly HOT. I don’t think either of us have sweated that much since we’ve been in SE Asia. Oh well, we can say we golfed seaside in Vietnam at least. Our scores will never be shared!
Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)
We had talked to other travellers who had been to Saigon, and almost all of them recommended a short visit. So we ended up only staying 2 nights there, and spent 1 day hitting the sites. We went to the Cu Chi Tunnels just outside of the city. This is how the Viet Cong hid from the US bombing during the Vietnam war. Was crazy to see how they had miles of underground tunnel systems – the tunnels were very small, the only way we actually were able to crawl through them was because they had been made bigger after the war, for tourists to be able to fit through. We also saw all the “booby traps” set up by the Vietnamese and were able to fire a gun at the shooting range. Kyle chose the M16 – was very loud! Funny to see a video on how the US tried everything to get into these tunnels, but could not for the life of them figure it out during the war.
After the Cu Chi Tunnels, we went to the War Remnants Museum. Was very shocking and disturbing. We read about the effects of the Agent Orange (apparently the most toxic chemical to that date) sprayed by the US during the war, and saw how it is still affecting people today. The chemical totally deforms people from birth in ways you can’t imagine. We saw a lot of shocking photography of the war, a lot of it was disturbing, but at the same time it opened our eyes and made us realize how lucky we are to live in such a safe and peaceful country.
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