After descending from the mountains, I made my way back to the coast to a small city named Mui Ne.
Mui Ne is growing tourist destination but is still small enough to have lots of adventures. It was the sand dunes are what really brought me here though.
The large white sand dunes are the biggest attraction of Mui Ne but the red sand dunes directly north of Mui Ne are what I was really looking to see. I had seen some pictures of the dunes and I was getting excited once I was seeing a lot of red soil on the ride over. However, I couldn’t help but feel underwhelmed when I reached them. The photos I had seen were definitely touched up or were taken during a particularly red sunrise or sunset. I was able to make my photos look just as red by slapping an orange filter on the camera lens but I deleted those pics because it wasn’t natural. The dunes were nice but two sunsets in a row didn’t yield the red sand I was hoping for so I looked to Google Maps satellite view for some help.
I found two areas in particular that had rich red soil. Maybe not in dune form, but the first was a red canyon and the other looked to be a dried up pond that appeared to be the richest patch of red I could find on the satellite view.
While looking for the spots, I got pulled over by the local police. I had read about Mui Ne being a tourist trap so I was prepared. I think the officer was caught off guard by me actually having an International Drivers Permit. Most foreigners barely even have a motorcycle license so the police can get easy money from foreigners.
In my case though, the officer had a backup plan and said he was going to hold my IDP for 30 days or I could conveniently pay a fine for speeding through the nearby town. He pulled up a blurry photo of a motorcycle on his phone and “46” overlaid on the photo. He said it was really a 30 KM/h zone but there weren’t any signs that I could find in either direction later. I’m not sure if that was even me in the photo and its unlikely he had a photo of me from just a minute prior but I was probably going faster than that and I didn’t want to give up my IDP so I followed him to a table and chairs next to the police van where he conveniently had a nice laminated sheet ready for me to review. The officer said I could pay 1 million Vietnamese Dong and I’d be free to go. The laminated sheet said the penalty was actually 500,000 to 800,000 Vietnamese Dong so I pointed that out and he said “OK, 500,000”
I obliged and then when on my way 500,000 VND ($21.56 USD) poorer but without forfeiting my IDP.
What surprised me the most about Mui Ne was tons of garbage along sides of highways and some of these were even new highways. I’ve seen things tossed from taxi windows and buses stopping to let someone toss trash to the side of the road but some areas looked like they were just used as local rubbish piles.
Even both sand dunes had a lot of garbage in the sand. Garbage bins are seldom seen and I haven’t seen a single recycle bin anywhere in the country so the lack of infrastructure likely greatly contributes to the amount of beer cans, water bottles, and other trash and refuge scattered across the county. For such a beautiful country, it’s a shame that littering is so common here. I can only hope that things change before it results in the downfall of the protected parks and biospheres of Vietnam.