Mui Ne: Day 2

Friday began at 7:30 am when I packed a small bag for the day and got my free breakfast of iced coffee and bread with eggs from our hotel. By 9:30 we were all on the bus and were driven to these huge sand dunes where small children holding flat plastic sleds literally swarmed our bus. I just watched as they tried to coax me off the bus and rent their sleds to zoon down the sand dunes. I then watched in horror as an older man holding a stick ran after the kids, scattering them and even hitting one girl on her thigh. This went on for a while and when the rest of our group had left to climb the dunes, I got off the bus and spoke to a beautiful little girl while DiDi petted this heinously overweight dog who was sitting at the restaurant. It turns out that the dog was constantly drinking Dutch Ladies, which are these juice boxes full of the richest chocolate milk you can imagine. It’s like drinking pudding.

So the rest of the group slid down the mountain and I cowered in the relative safety of this nearby restaurant. We got back on the bus after about half an hour and were at this sister resort, Ocean Star, by 10:00. I got to their beach, put on some heavy duty sunscreen, and decided to go rent a surfboard. Tony, Sarah, Leah, Becca, Mike, Bryan, Will, Graham, and I walked down the beach for about an hour to get to Jibe’s rental place and bar. I rented a long board for four hours and split it with Sarah, so it only ended up being $7 for each of us. We then walked across the street to this restaurant called Smoky’s and I had a cheap lunch of my xao bo and Coke.

At 12:30 pm I was in the water with Sarah, our long board, and our friends. The kite surfers and their colorful kites were just beyond us and the point at which the waves were breaking. Surfing is difficult, I quickly realized. I rode it in a few times, mostly on my stomach but a couple times on my knees. The waves were big and so frequent that I barely had any time to get myself situated on the board before being totally rocked by the awesome power that is the ocean. I got tossed to the sand quite a few times and after about an hour and a half and a nice long gash on my ankle from the board’s long fin, I went back to shore. I cleaned my wound, grabbed a Coke, and played some pool with Will and Sarah.

After a while I went back into the water and surfed for another hour before the surfboard hit me square in the face. By then I was quickly reaching a higher level of frustration and decided to call it quits. Sarah and I took xe oms back to Ocean Star and I read in the “hot” tub (just warm pool water) for a bit before getting a head and back massage at the resort for half an hour.

It was my first massage and it was pretty relaxing. She first pointed to my bathing suit top and then to the hook on the wall but I was cool with that. The massage was basically an exfoliation too (there you go, Mom!) because I was pretty sandy after my full day of surfing. When it was over I could hardly stand because I was so relaxed all over. It was $6 well spent for sure.

I then walked with most of our group (14 of 19 people) to Jibe’s and we spent from about 6-7:30 pm there. I played pool and had an iced coffee with milk while everybody had two-for-one happy hour drinks. We then walked to Montezuma’s Mexican restaurant and I had a Coke, a margarita (I got it confused with a daiquiri) and a chicken enchilada. I got on a xe om with Jill and our group went to Wax Club after dinner at about 9:00 pm. There I had another iced coffee, many free peanuts, and a pretty close game of pool against this British guy (which I lost by only one ball). I got a taxi back to the hotel at 11:00 pm, cuddled with DiDi, and was asleep by midnight.