thoughts on mui ne

Mui Ne has been a great place to bring this trip to an end.

The beach is lovely, the sand dunes are incredible and this part of Vietnam gets more sunshine than any other. My hotel has also been the perfect chill out resort - lovely rooms, a great pool by the beach and a restaurant serving amazing food. It's on the pricey side for this country (around 50 quid a night) but when you consider that in England that wouldn't buy a room in a fucking Travelodge, it puts it into perspective.

Having a really nice place to stay has helped in Mui Ne as I have not been that impressed with the nightlife. There are plenty of decent bars and restaurants, but it is more the geography of the area that is a problem. Mui Ne isn't really a place - it's more a long road of resorts by the beach, and everything is very spread out. At night it all appears uninviting and rather desolate, so I've prefered to eat in the hotel's restaurant by the beach and then read books in the garden outside my room. And chug back a few beers, obviously.

I have never been on holiday anywhere in the world where there are so few British holidaymakers. I came across one group at the yellow sand dunes on Tuesday, but that's it. Everyone else is overwhelmingly German. There are lots of Germans here, but the mildly amusing thing is that the locals can only communicate in English with them. I wonder why there are so few Brits here compared to the hordes that descend on Thailand. Strange...

I've tried to avoid the news while I've been away, but there were two events yesterday that it was impossible to ignore. David Cameron's son died and a plane crashed in Amsterdam. The coverage I then watched on CNN and the BBC World News Channel intrigued me. Firstly, neither mentioned Cameron at all. This is unsurprising in a way given that hardly anyone outside of the UK will have heard of him, but then again English football gets saturation coverage across the news networks over here. What also intrigued me was the CNN coverage of the Amsterdam crash. They hadn't got a fucking clue what was going on, how many people were affected or anything. Their coverage was totally reliant on following people on Twitter who were close to the scene. What this says about the state and future of the news industry is a moot point.

Tomorrow, and indeed Saturday, are going to be gruelling days. I'm determined to get up in time to have my first breakfast of the holiday and spend a couple of hours by the pool before my car picks me up at noon to take me to Saigon. Then it's a four to five hour drive, and a couple of hours' wait at the airport. I then have a three hour flight to Hong Kong, a two hour wait at the airport and a 12 hour flight back to London. Oh and then there is the worst bit - travelling across London...