the analog kid: Mui Ne

This is not a leftover photo from Morocco or Mongolia. This is from Vietnam.

Between Saigon and the big resort town of Nha Trang is the smaller beach town of Mui Ne. I had heard that the beach is pretty and the town is quiet, so I thought it would be a nice place to relax for a couple days.

I was wrong.

It's a beautiful place, with some fantastic places to take photos. There are dozens of photos I could have posted. For instance, one of the things Mui Ne is famous for is kitesurfing. This involves attaching what looks like a snowboard to a small parachute and using the wind to propel you across the water.

I walked onto the beach to see dozens of kites tracing graceful arcs across the ocean.

It's the kind of thing I would have been willing to sit on the beach and watch for hours. But you've probably already figured out the fatal flaw in this plan. If the wind is strong enough to send kitesurfers skittering across the water at 30 mph the conditions are probably not ideal for sitting on the beach.

I kid you not, the wind was roaring.

I found a sunbed hidden in some palm trees 50 yards off the beach but I didn't last there long. I was literally getting sandblasted.

The beach at Mui Ne is officially 11 km long (almost 7 miles) and the best stretches are all occupied by resorts catering to kitesurfers. (Who knew?) There is literally one road, so grubby backpacker bums stay in guest houses on the other side of the street.

The town is small but getting bigger quickly. It's already outgrown the power grid. I paid a little more for A/C in my room because of the stifling heat. In the future I know to ask if the hotel has generators in case the electricity in the town shuts down.

I awoke in the middle of my first night there feeling a bit sticky. The A/C was off. I flipped the light switch to figure out why. No light either. I was taking an early-morning tour so I had to shower in the dark.

When I got back in the afternoon I was sweaty, sandy, tired and in desperate need of a shower and a nap. But there was still no electricity. No A/C. No fan. No water. No sleep. No nuthin'.

The resorts and a few of the restaurants have their own generators, but the few internet cafes do not. So there wasn't a dadburned thing for me to do. I booked a bus to leave that night.

The tour I mentioned above was great. I paid a motorcycle rider $10 to take me to the sights. We went over 20 miles outside of town to the White Sand Dunes, as seen in the top photo, and here.

One side of the highway calls to mind Big Sur and the coast of Northern California. Cross the street and you're in Arizona. We passed a couple cemeteries that looked like they belonged in some ghost town in the American West.

Except for the swastikas on the crypts, that is. I'm pretty sure these are meant to be the Buddhist swastika and not the Nazi Hakenkreuz.

The landscape in the area is fascinating. There's the ocean, the beach, then the highway, then a small strip of lush tropical forest, and then sand dunes, with no transition between any of them.

Closer to town we went to another set of sand dunes, except these are an ocher color. The view across the dunes towards the ocean and sky looked to me like a Mark Rothko painting. With boats in the middle.

Here is a shot of the ocean and town wedged between the dunes and the sun.

Another thing Mui Ne is famous for is fish sauce, a rather pungent condiment, the smell of which permeates the entire town. We passed a village of fishermen who make their living off the sauce.

In the foreground are circular boats which fishermen use close to shore. I haven't seen this type of boat anywhere else.

Our last stop was at the Fairy Stream, a name which positively screams tourist trap!

I was pleasantly surprised. My moto driver pawned me off to a "guide", a little boy named Nam. He said he was 12. I would guess eight, tops. The stream is barely an inch deep in most spots, so to explore it you walk in the water.

Nam would stop, hold up his hand and gravely say "Deep" when we reached a particularly arduous stretch, where the water was more than four inches deep.

I was impressed, however, with how seriously he took his job, which is more than I can say about my moto driver. Based on his behavior during the half-day I spent with him I'm guessing he spent the $10 I paid him on some combination of cigarettes, hair care products and his celphone bill.

I had to ask him to repeat his name a few times. I thought I misheard him but no, he was telling me his name is Mr. Wonderful. I asked him what his real name was. He said "Call me Wonderful". I said, no, I'm so sorry, but there's simply no way I'm calling you Wonderful. He reluctantly told me his name was Hieu. (His brother is Mr. Perfect.)

Back to the stream. Anyone who has walked with me knows I walk extremely fast. I could not keep up with Nam, my little tour guide. At the end of our "tour" I gave him a couple pointers. Don't walk so fast. Tourists like to take their time. Walk with them so they can ask you questions. And, how do I put this politely ... you're a cute kid but perhaps they don't want you in every single one of their pictures.

He eagerly accepted my tips, both verbal and monetary.

The Fairy Stream, believe it or not, actually lived up to the name. It's a fantastic landscape of crazy shapes and colors. On one side are what look like sandstone stalagmites, with red sand dunes towering overhead.