 Please see the Part 2 of our trip trans-Vietnam in July 2006 with highlights in Mui Ne Beach, Ho Chi Minh City, known as Saigon and the Mekong Delta.
Said goodbye to Dalat, we continued our journey by car down to the South and the next stop was Mui Ne Beach. July and August are not good months to spend time at Mui Ne beach as the sea is muddy and full of seaweed. We saw nobody at the beach, just some visitors like us, strolling around the long white sand. The Coco Beach Resort is very nice with lovely garden, an open-air reading room, a small swimming pool, restaurant by the beach. There are four family beach-front villas only so if your family want to have a room in this lovely resort, it’s advised to book early to avoid fully booked.
  The next day we had a Jeep tour around the famous Red sand dune where we met two lovely, friendly boys. They were on their summer vacation and helped parents by being ‘local tour guide’ and letting client hire their plastic skateboards. We rent two ‘plastic skateboards’ from them. They told us many things about visitors coming to their homeland, about the differences between Western visitors and Vietnamese visitors, they taught us how to collect the garbage that visitors left after their visit.
Here come our little friends. They made our visit to Red sand dune become more enjoyable.
After Mui Ne, we took a short train ride to Ho Chi Minh City. The train was nice compares to other trains in Vietnam. It took around 3 hours to get to Saigon from Mui Ne and you could enjoy the scenery along the way. We visited Cu Chi tunnels and some other sites in Saigon like Jade Emperor Temple, War Museum, Reunification Hall, Ben Thanh market.. The War Museum was very moving and we saw many visitors cried for the cruel of the wars.
The next day we visited Mekong Delta, which is considered a ‘must-see’ element of all Vietnam Classic tour. Along the way, we took a short rest at Mekong Restop. The place is large and surrounded by a lovely garden, lily pond and fishpond.
We then took the boat trip cruise on the small canals and visited fruit orchards, a traditional family-run brick kiln, and some long established cottage industries like ‘Bong ngo’ (popcorn), ‘Keo dua’ (candy with coconut)…Lunch at Sau Giao Restaurant was really nice as well with food decoration follow the life of local farmers in the Mekong Delta. The cruise was really enjoyable but the long queue at Can Tho Jetty was terrible. However, a good news that the Can Tho Bridge will officially in used in April 30, 2010 so you won’t have to take a long queue like us.
The next day we visited Cai Rang floating market and see how local people purchase and sell their products. Many good tropical fruits like pineapples, watermelon, mango, rambutan, potatoes, sweet potatoes…are on sell with cheap price.
We back to Saigon in the late afternoon and spent one more night there before flying back to Hanoi. The 16-day trans-Vietnam tour was over with fondest memories of local guide, local people, beautiful landscape of the S-shaped country. See you very soon in the coming time!
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