2015: Vietnam is not in my list of favorite countries, because of its horrendous traffic and the number of motorcycles on the road. I am terrible at crossing busy roads; I can't gauge distance. I'll either end up getting honked by cars and narrowly escaping death, or standing on the curb for so long that I start getting pitying stares from passers-by.
The main reason I visited Saigon was Mui Ne, specifically the sand dunes. It was the closest to a desert that I could afford to go to, and of course because it would look cool in pictures. We went to the White Dunes, which are claimed to be the driest spot in Southeast Asia. If you climb up to the more elevated parts of the dunes, you could see a beautiful lake, but the desert is gradually growing, and it is likely that one day the entire lake will be covered with sand.
 |
| White sand, as far as the eyes can see |
 |
| The lake in the distance, and the scorching desert sun |
 |
| Attacked by a mini sandstorm |
There were kids selling food and sleds, which were basically thin sheets of plastic that you were supposed to sit on while sliding down a slope. Being the cheapskates that we were, we didn't buy any. Instead we took one that was abandoned in the sand by a previous visitor. It's important to reuse and recycle these days. It was a good thing too that we didn't buy because the thing didn't work. We sat on the edge of the highest and steepest slope we could find, tilted forward and hoped gravity would pull us and we could merrily slide down. Nothing happened. We edged forward and still we were stuck there. So we got rid of the sled, and tried to slide down on our butts. The sand was pretty damn hot.
I don't know what we did wrong, but there was no fast, exhilarating, adrenaline-inducing slide down the hill that we had hoped for. We wonder if we were too heavy that we were just stuck there in the sand and wouldn't budge.
