Vietnam Vacation Part 2

*If you this is your first read about my vacation, you should read Vietnam Vacation Part 1 first

As the story continues, we arrive in a little coastal town known as Mui Ne.   The first thing we notice as we get off the bus is this really weird smell.  Is it coming from me? Did something happen in my pants while I was sleeping? I was pretty sick.....Surprisingly no.  The smell follows you everywhere you go.  What is it? The water?   

We had booked a room at the Canary Resort.  We had difficulties finding rooms in the area, and settled on this place, but it cost a lot more than the rest of our hotels throughout the trip.  We decided to stroll around and see if we could find a cheaper place.  We stop at one spot, where we were greeted by a manager and he tells us we can get a room there for $50 a night.  This isn't any better than what we were going to be paying, so we decide to look elsewhere.  Before we leave, we are stopped by an Asian man.  He tells us that he's only paying $18 a night for his room.  Close one, I was nearly conned into something else.  Like I told you before, they know I'm a sucker and are just waiting to work their magic on me. The manager then tells one of the employees to show us around, and he shows us a couple of rooms which are shockingly only $18 as well.  They were pretty dingy so we passed and after some useless walking around, we decide to go back to the Canary.   

Upon check in, we are informed that they double booked our room, so unfortunately we have to get bumped up to a deluxe room.  Ahhh, so unfortunate for us.  We check into the room and I find that most of my clothes and all of my underwear are wet.  How it got wet, I don't know, but probably from the same water that dripped onto Kristin during the bus ride.   Some of it had a dark muddy look to it (no, not the inside of my underwear, no need to report that in here), mostly just my shorts and shirts.  I put them in a laundry bag and sent them for washing.  The rest, about 8 pairs of underwear, I drape on the balcony and around the room to dry.   Luckily were in a beach area, so I don't really need my underwear too badly.  I can strut around in the nude.  Or wear shorts.  Probably the latter since bearing breasts is illegal, I don't think bearing bird would go over too well. We head down to the beach, and find that it is much nicer than Nha Trang, although that didn't take much.  It was really quiet there, but like Nha Trang, it was overcast.  A nice theme to Vietnam.    The rest of our stay here was cloudy with the exception of a few hours here and there.

I was still a bit sick at this point in the trip, and now Kristin was beginning to get the same thing. I had a fever, and as a result, did some sweating throughout the night.  The next day after breakfast, we come back to our room and there's two maids in there.  Both of them are kinda acting odd, and are chuckling.  I have no sweet clue why.  Actually, I have a few ideas.  First, maybe they thought it was funny that my underwear were laid out all around the room, or they thought the sweat in the bed was my pee (they might not think this one is so funny though).  We took it easy that day, and mainly just lazed on the beach and read.  We also got to witness a great part of the culture.  While laying on the beach, a little boy comes running down the beach with a chicken in his hands and runs up to a little shack that's built beside our hotel.  

The manager and his prize fighter.

There was animals on this beach, just like the one in Nha Trang, but the ones here were alive.  We later seen the same boy leading about six cows down the beach.  Must be quite the manager/farmer (and all at the age of of about 10).  On a routine bathroom break, Kristin, as luck would have it, noticed a cock fight happening at the shack.  Out of clear excitement, I run up to the room and watch for a while.  

A battle of epic proportions.  Who will win? Sir Cluck Alot or Dr. Bird Flu?

But then I get bored.  I must have lasted twenty minutes or more watching, and even the locals that were present were beginning to leave.  No one must have expected these two cocks to have a marathon slug fest, but they did. I went back down to the beach. After about another half hour or so, the young boy comes strolling back down the beach with a big smile and his chicken held proudly in his arms.  He was the proud owner of a winning chick.

Mui Ne is known for a few things:  Giant sand dunes (red and yellow ones), a fishing village and fish sauce.  We decided to take a day tour and see some of the sights.  We were picked up by an old army jeep that was circa 1970.  The first thing we do is head to a spot known as the fairy stream. I have no clue why its called a fairy stream.  It was a stream, it was in the middle of a red canyon (no comparison to the grand canyon), but there was certainly no fairies flying around.  However, it did allow me find out one mystery of the trip.  The weird smell was fish sauce.  They keep it outside in in giant pottery.  I certainly didn't try it on any of my fish.  Next we checked out a fishing village.  Sort of.  We stopped, took a picture of it, and then kept going.  We continued on to the sand dunes.  The first one, we end up with a young boy, maybe 14 who leads our way (clearly not needed as the dunes were gigantic and you couldn't miss them).  We get two crazy carpets to go sledding on the dunes.  I'm expecting a fast slide, but am let down.  Despite the hill having a very steep slope.  I was only able to travel about 40 feet down the hill on my crazy carpet before I ground to a slow stop due to my carpet getting buried in the sand.  The dunes were pretty nice to look at, but other than that, they didn't serve up too much excitement. 

When we get back to the hotel, I was covered head to toe, in amongst all my hair with sand.  I needed a shower because I spreading sand throughout the whole room.  After the shower, we head into town for a supper and a few drinks.  We end up at a great surf bar, appearance wise.  The service was the shits.   The menu looked great, I ordered some handmade ravioli.  While waiting, we have to listen to our server walk back and forth beside us sliding her feet along the ground in  because she's too lazy to lift them, and creating the most annoying noise.  After fifteen minutes of waiting, the server tells me they are all out. I have no idea why it took this long to figure this out, but it did.  Luckily, I'm a calm guy, I can wait.  I choose some herb chicken to have next.  After five minutes, they tell me they don't have any of that left. What the hell? I've spent twenty minutes waiting for food, listening to this effing server dragging her damn feet, I still have no food, and have to find something else to order.  A few moments later, I'm told that, oh, they now have chicken again.  Did they just go kill some chicken out back for me or was my heavy footed server really that clueless? The chicken ended up being delicious, no complaints about that.  

We headed back to the resort, and in our room on our nightstand is a small mound of dirt.  Where did it come from? A lot of sand came off me when I got in the room earlier, but it certainly didn't fall into a little mound, and then hop off the floor onto the night stand.  Was it a serial killer's trademark? Was he about to leap out of our closet and kick my ass? Nope.  The sand was a mystery.

Oooooh, so mysterious!

We decided we wanted to go to Saigon (Ho Chi Mihn City) for New Years Eve, so we book a bus for the following morning.  As we're eating breakfast, and I start to feel a few rumbles in my jungle.  Not what I need if I'm going to be going on a five hour bus ride.  Kristin, always expecting the worse, packed a little medical bag in her luggage, and lucky for me, there was Imodium. I run up to the room, go past the two maids who clean our room, and notice they're giggling.  Ahah, they're the sand droppers.  As a token of my appreciation for their little prank, I built my own sand dune on the floor of the room for them. Then, I take the pills.  According to directions, you should take two after your first incident, and then one after each successive incident.  There was only two in her bag.  I soon had another incident.  The bus was coming in 15 minutes.  Things were not looking good! I went to a little pharmacy across from the resort and they had Imodium as well. However, it was spelled Immodium (with two m's at the beginning).  This wasn't a time for being picky though, so I pop another pill.  Few moments later, another incident.  Oh good lord, how I'm going to make it 5 hours on a bus if I can't even last 15 minutes here.  I take a another pill, and thankfully, there's no more incidents.  But it does come at a cost.  Taking a bunch of Imodium causes you to get the reverse of diarrhea.....you know what I'm talking about