A Misadventure Story in Mui Ne, Vietnam
My alarm shook me awake; it’s the first time I had heard an alarm in weeks. When a person is traveling for an extended period of time, it’s easy to forget what day of the week it is, what month it is or even the year (I’m not even joking). It was four in the morning. Neither the roosters nor the sun had shown any life, yet there we were, climbing out of bed.
The coastal, Vietnamese town we woke up in had a decently large population, but we had no hope to find someone to sell us some breakfast at that hour. We were told to be waiting out in the courtyard by half past four in the morning, so we lumbered out into the darkness. We sat in silence, wrapped up in scarves and hoodies, as I watched my sister attempt to eat a two-day-stale baguette that she had been hording. If there’s anything that traveling in Vietnam can guarantee, it’s an overabundance of stale baguettes.
It was soon 4:30 AM, and then it soon wasn’t. The minutes rolled past our agreed meeting time steadily. “I swear,” I broke the silence, “if they don’t show up, and I woke up at 4:30 just to watch you try to eat a stale baguette, I’m not going to be stoked.” Our laughter filled the courtyard as Elyse ditched the last half of her breakfast.
Just as we were about to give up hope, we saw a set of ominous headlights drive by. A brick archway was our only view onto the road; the headlights had passed by, but soon came back. An old, World War military jeep backed into the courtyard through the archway. A Vietnamese man jumped out of the passenger seat. He walked to the back of the jeep, mumbled something inaudible and slapped the tailgate of the war vehicle. As if waiting for something spectacle to happen, Elyse and I stood motionless, watching the man.
He smacked the jeep again, mumbled some unknown words – but this time, much louder – and waved his arm as if to usher us into the trunk. Till this day, I don’t know what he said, but I can imagine it would translate roughly to kennel up.
We hopped into the steel trunk like a pair of well-trained Labradors, and took a seat on the tire-wells. The backseat – assuming there was one, once – had been completely gutted. The only thing below us was steel and iron, making for a comfy ride. Not. We were bouncing around more than a pinball at an arcade tournament as the jeep set off on the not-so-well-maintained Vietnamese roads.
It had been over an hour, and we were still driving. The only thing we had seen in the darkness was sand and shrubbery. “Shouldn’t we have gotten to the sand dunes by now?” I asked.
“Is this is even the right jeep?” my sister retorted.
By now, we had learned that our drivers didn’t speak English, or just had no desire to speak to us.
“Do we…do we jump out?” she queried. We both let out a nervous cackle and shook our heads, although neither of us were confident that jumping wasn’t the best option.
As the sky was starting to lighten up, we finally laid eyes on our destination. We had booked a guided tour to watched the sunrise over the white sand dunes of Mui Ne, Vietnam. We saw groups of people being carried up the dunes on ATVs and jeeps to get to the highest point of the dunes. Although my sister and I are both people who would rather hike than take a vehicle, we knew we would miss the sunrise if we hiked for it.
We jumped out of the jeep and headed over to the awaiting 4-wheelers. Our drivers followed behind us, oddly slow, and stopped to talk to some of the other guides. Once again, we were left to stand and stare at them, clueless. One of the drivers pointed to the top of the dunes and said, “Go.”
“Oh, no drive?” I asked, pointing to an ATV. We didn’t want to be typical, spoiled, American tourists, but every other tourist was getting on a buggy with their guide. We were the only ones left standing, as all the 4-wheelers disappeared.
Our guides looked at each other and laughed. “Okay, 900,000 dong,” one said as he held out his hand.
“What!” my sister exclaimed. “That’s, like, 40 bucks!”
When we booked the tour, the lady specifically said that we would get a ride to the top of the dunes to see the sunrise. Yet, this wasn’t a surprise to us. It wasn’t uncommon to book a trip in Southeast Asia and receive something in return that was nothing like what you had been told.
We left our guides with a, “Okay, whatever,” and started hiking. We trekked up the first sand dune, following the tire tracks of the ATVs. When we summited the dune, we realized just how far away we really were. There was a mob of people along the ridge, watching the sunrise, that was nearly a mile away.
On a normal day, a mile would be a piece of cake, but we were racing against the sun. My sister let out a pessimistic laugh. I started jogging through the sand, but soon lost motivation. When we finally reached the ridge line with the best view, the sun was well beyond the horizon. People were packing up and heading off by the time I got my camera out.
“Well, so much for that,” Elyse exclaimed.
As I started snapping some photos, I realized that the “white sand dunes” were not very white. They were definitely orange. I looked off into the distance, a few miles away, where there seemed to be a whiter sand dune. Some jeeps and ATVs were driving off in that direction, undoubtedly to see the real “white sand dunes”. And, undoubtedly, it would be another $40 to go see them.
That wasn’t going to happen.
The sun was starting to warm the sand, which was our cue to leave. After some photos of the late sunrise, we trekked back down to the jeep. Our drivers were nowhere to be found. We walked through the groups of guides sitting at tables, trying to identify our pair.
No luck.
“Well, shit. What are we supposed to do? We can’t walk back, it took us hours to get here.”
We joined the Vietnamese guides at the small, plastic tables. It must have been a locals-only type of joint, because only the guides were given coffee and water. The tourists were not acknowledged or offered anything, even though water in the desert seemed necessary. The sun had surpassed warming the sand and had started scorching the sand.
We watched a few rounds of tourists descend from the dunes, re-join their drivers and head off in their jeeps. It had been about an hour, and no sign of our guides. We had accepted that we were now part of the desert. We would soon be living off of lizards and rain water. Except, I don’t eat meat and there isn’t much rain water in the desert, so we were pretty screwed.
Where there once was about fifty jeeps, only two were left in the sand lot. Sweat was beading down our foreheads and soaking through our shirts. It was hard to believe we were wearing hoodies and scarves a few hours earlier.
We stared picking up our bags to either start walking, or try to hitch a ride with one of the remaining cars, when a familiar jeep pulled in. It was our guides. Finally, I thought. Who knows where they had been. Who knows what they had been up to, but they looked pleased with themselves. We threw our packs into the steel trunk when one of the guides stopped us.
“Wait, wait, wait. 500,000 dong,” he said while holding out his hand.
I don’t think he realized how close to death he was. I thought my sister was going to strangle him. My sister thought she was going to strangle him. It only took one, powerful, “WHAT!” to rattle out of her vocal chords before he quickly changed his tune.
After bouncing for a few hours, we finally returned to our hostel. It had been nearly eight hours since we were shuffled into the jeep in the courtyard that morning. We walked past the reception counter where we had booked our tour the day before and looked at the beautiful photos of the “white sand dunes” that lured us in. “What a joke,” my sister laughed. “What a freaking joke.”
Cheers to mishaps and misadventures!
Would I recommend doing a tour of the White Sand Dunes in Mui Ne, Vietnam? I think any time spent outside, especially in nature, is valuable. With that being said, that particular sunrise didn’t even make it to my top 10 sunrises. Regardless, we needed more time to hike the sand dunes in order to properly see the sun actually rise. If you aren’t going to pay for the jeeps or ATVs, you are only going to see orange sand. It would take, round trip, a few hours to hike to the white sand.
I had heard from a few different people who spent the extra money on the jeep journey to the actual white sands, that it’s not worth it. They advertise the journey to be 1.5 hours (90 minutes) and you will see the white sands and a lake. Although you do visit both of those places, the journey lasts closer to 10-15 minutes and the guides are very pushy. They urge you to move faster when exploring and taking pictures.
Honestly, I would give the sand dunes of Mui Ne a miss. There are so many other things to see and spend money on that are truly worth it.
