Dunes & Fish Sauce in Mui Ne

Craving some more beach time, we headed to Mui Ne, a small beach town along the coast of Vietnam. It appealed to us more than the more popular beach town of Nha Trang for its sand dunes and fishing village along with its quiet beaches.  We spent our first afternoon lazing by the beach watching the kite surfers who travel from all over the world to catch winds that build to 20 knots.  An evening dip in the hotel pool up on the hill above the ocean was the perfect closer.

At breakfast, we met a US Vietnam war veteran who we joined for a motorbike ride around the area. He’d been to Mui Ne before and still remembered enough of his State Department taught Vietnamese to order the right amount of condensed milk in our iced coffees.  Off the coast, we visited beautiful white sand dunes flanked by natural spring fed lakes then closed the day with the red sand dunes closer to the ocean.

The next day we awoke early to meet the fishermen bringing in their catch, which in Mui Ne is mostly small sardines that are steamed, dried in the sun and fermented in vats for fish sauce. I’ll let the photos below tell the story.