Phan Thiet - Mui Ne

I've been having a great time in Mui Ne, a pretty decent compensation for every shit that happened to me in Nha Trang. I actually took more pictures this time and I kinda realized that I could still really enjoy that. Pictures of just scenery bore the hell outta me but as long as there are people I know in it, myself included, taking pictures can still be fun. I kind of regret not having taken many in Danang and Hue, the two places I've met the best people so far. :(

Anyways, here come a few pics I took for the sake of introducing Phan Thiet / Mui Ne a little.

I'm staying at a resort in Mui Ne, which is a village about 35km away from the city Phan Thiet of Binh Thuan province. Mui Ne means 'a (terrestrial) peak to hide' because Mui Ne lies directly next to the Pacific Ocean which is anything but pacific, and everytime a storm comes, people hide (Vietnamese: Né) behind this terrestrial peak that protrudes into the ocean like a pincer (Vietnamese: Mũi).

People in Mui Ne (and pretty much Phan Thiet too) live on fishing. Here's a picture of the fishing village.

Then I went to Phan Thiet's very famous sand-dunes. From Nha Trang to Phan Thiet, the ground consists of pretty much sand but in Phan Thiet, the sand's really special for having 4 different colors: white, yellow, red and black.

This is me on a white sand-dune. :D You can really only see sand as far as your eyes can reach. If I didn't know better, I would think this was a desert. Anyways this picture was taken for me by an American friend I met on the way. He's Vietnamese American and he's doing a 3-month Asia trip with his two other Asian American friends. 3 months and with friends! I'm so jelly! T_T

Today I continued the tour to the Linh Sơn pagoda on the Tà Cú mountain. I was told that there are 4 mountains that are located like 4 corners of a square around Binh Thuan and each mountain has a God who protects the land. So thanks to those 4 Gods, the citizens of Binh Thuan have always had a life safe from natural disasters and more. The 4 mountains are named Tà Cú, Tà Zôn, Tà Ban and Tà Môn. Tà Cú is the most famous mountain thanks to the Pagoda, which has the sculpture of the biggest "lying Buddha" in South East Asia. The lying Buddha is 49m long and was sculptured by the locals there many years ago. They went up into the mountain, discovered a rock that looked a lot like a lying figure and just thought, "Hey, why not make a statue of Buddha when he went into Nirvana?" And it was done. :))

Then I went to a Thanh Long garden. Thanh Long is like Phan Thiet's fruit speciality because the sand ground makes it too hard for normal plants to grow. Thanh Long loves sand apparently, so the people in Phan Thiet have ditched rice plants a long time ago and jumped over to planting Thanh Long, now to the extent of exporting even.

Aaaaand, this is me visiting a Cham temple. Middle Vietnam was originally populated by the Cham tribe who also lived in Cambodia and built the all too famous Ankor Wat. This temple is similiar to those constructions in Ankor Wat, meaning it is made of some special material that doesn't ever let moss and the kind grow. I was told that everywhere we see moss, those are areas that were re-constructed by Vietnamese people later on, obviously not using the same technique as Cham people because we don't know how they did it.

And now to the last place of Phan Thiet - Mui Ne that is worth introducing: Suoi Tien or translated into English, Fairy Stream. It's a small stream running in a small valley between two sandy mountains, creating a wonderful adventure path for tourists as you can see in the picture below.

The water is extremely shallow most of the time, only once on my way to the very beginning of the stream was it knee-deep. But I wanted to see the waterfall so bad, I took on the challenge and wet my shorts a little around the ends. It turned out fine though because it was so sunny, my shorts were dry again after like 10 mins or so, lol. But the waterfall was really a joke. Only 2 meters in height and not even that pretty. :(

You can't really see the waterfall in this pic because it's hidden behind that rock. Told ya it was a joke. The best part is actually the way up to the waterfall, it looks a little like America's Grand Canyon only with red sand instead of rocks. Here's a picture where you can see a loooot of red sand.

Anyways, Phan Thiet - Mui Ne has been awesome so far. I totally enjoyed my free late afternoon on the beach, just lazying around and editing pictures. Now to wrap it up, I'm off to eat some seafood before packing to leave for Sai Gon tomorrow. More pictures will follow on Facebook when I actually have an internet connection that doesn't block that damn site. -_-

Thanks for cheering me up after Nha Trang, Mui Ne! I'll definitely be back again. This place is too awesome not to. :x