An old-school beach town that has been converted into a resort town because of how beautiful its shores are. Fortunately for me, the economy is still slacking and even the Vietnamese are not sure they are still going to have a job next month. (This is a joke that nobody will get so allow me to explain: the unemployment rate in Vietnam is 2% basically always. This is true because the guy who awakes from his nap on his motorbike to yell/offer "motorbike" every three hours is employed. Everybody has a job but jobs often consist of doing nothing and getting paid nothing. Other jobs consist of working 14 hour days every day with two days off a month.) OK, because people are not confident in their inflow of income in the future they are more reluctant to take a vacation, especially one in a resort town and especially when they can go to their hometowns or Hanoi or Saigon (yes, they call Saigon) for Tet (New Year), which at the time was just a couple of days away. So, even though I was in Mui Ne during what is normally the high season the town was way less busy that it could have been.
The first night we pseudo-busted into a resort and swam in the sea in the moonlight. I say "pseudo-busted into" because we bribed the security guard to guide us through the maze of weaving paths that lead to water with a beer. It was memorable and awesome. The water is warm and the beach was completely empty other than us and the beer-drinking security guard who decided to spend some time on the beach as well. We built the Chinese city of Xi'an (which I visited) as it is the home town of one of the people in our late-night swimming session and has walls that are relatively easy to replicate with sand. This being said, our sandy Xi-an devolved into a bowl of noodles complete with chopsticks which made it look like a TV with rabbit ear antennas.
The next morning we returned to the beach and our Xi'an/noodles/TV remained. I guess people liked it.
Mui Ne is one of the best places in the world to kite and wind surf. I was ready to learn how to do at least one (I was leaning toward kite surfing since Mui Ne is particularly famous for it) until I learned it costs about US$300 to get started. This was way out of my price range so I took to jumping waves in the notoriously rough (read: awesome) sea with its large waves and strong ripe tide. Kite surfing is so popular here that several times I was able to count 50 kites in the area; and that at a time when the high season was not so high.
Our hostel was mediocre and the food is overpriced though good. Mui Ne is known for its sand dunes (red/yellow and white) but nobody had the proper footwear (closed-toe shoes, no sandals because the sand is so hot) so we did not go. We rented bicycles and went all over which was good fun. Mui Ne is more of a strip of beach than a town. If you go more than a few blocks off the beach there is almost nothing. The 11-15km (6.8-9.3 miles, depending on the source) is one of the longer beaches in the world and we went on bike to where beach-goers stopped going and there was not a person in site. It was nice and riding my rented bike on the sand/in the water was fun. Then I popped a tire and it was still fun.
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