I am currently in a hotel room in Mu Nei (Pronounced Moo Nay). I have clean sheets, air conditioning, and after the ride I’ve had it is utter heaven.
There was a disastrous start to this trip. I might not even have been going all this way, but thankfully circumstances are better now. My bike was stolen in Bui Vien as I was filming the ‘The Red Road’. I was utterly gutted at first, did all I could. Turns out the Vietnamese are really big on tickets and I had actually parked in a bike park (No signs, just a concrete sidewalk for all intents and purposes..) and when I got back, It wasn’t there because I didn’t have a ticket. Security didn’t want to know and the police did nothing. What is most likely happened is it was spotted not to have a ticket, someone came along, started it and took off with it after paying the security guy a ‘fee’. Bah. $175 down the drain.
After a much needed sleep and some food, I set about finding a new bike – (Ideally with the same weird gear pattern of (N 1 2 3 4 that mine used to. Seriously, it makes sense, why have 1 N 2 3 4 that I’m told the vast majority of bikes do?) I wasn’t about this let this piss on my bonfire. I’d been thinking about this trip for weeks.
Anyway, I eventually bought a new bike for a similar price, exact same model but all in black. There’s actually a USB charger on it as well so I can use Google Maps which came in VERY useful on the roads.
Setting out from HCMC at 9:30 was the plan, hit the traffic and the highways and carried on through till the city limits. We needed to get on the AH1 – Pretty much one of only a few roads that run through Vietnam the whole way. I was told it is still under construction so to watch out for parts. The part I needed was under construction so after a while of faffing about and driving in circles, the right route was found. Except.. It didn’t really seem like a route. Was I lost?
As you can see, that doesn’t look like much of a road. Red dirt and huge bumps and pot holes. It essentially wound its way all through a rubber plantation.
It went on and on. There as virtually noone; a few passers by, a few farmers tending to the trees. It was a real ‘out in the sticks’ drive. It suddenly got very foresty and all you could see for kilometers around were rubber trees. Going from light into dense forest. Hmm. If this was a video game, this is the point I would save.
Soon after this came some real road which took me through a lot of small towns and villages and past many fields. It’s still very “jungle-ish” in these parts too, so those that aren’t filled with houses are just covered with foliage.
The roads carried on for hours until it turned back into the AH1 – The main highway, which is what I was after in the first place!
A few more hours down the AH-1 and a brief conversation with my friend Jason over Facebook, he recommended a hotel to stay at in Mui Ne. I was trying to get there fairly quickly now as the diversion through the rubber plantation had taken up a huge chunk of the day and the sun was going down. Vietnamese roads are insane at the best of times and at night they’re even worse.
A little further on a warning rang true “Be careful of the AH1, It’ still under construction”
Yes, but what that involved was DRIVING THROUGH IT AS IT WAS BEING FUCKING BUILT. Huge JCBs and diggers were moving large quantities of dirt, machines laying asphalt were placing it over gravel as motorbikes and scooters ducked around them. The road had turned to gravel now, and I had to drive slowly for fear of slipping. It was so dusty the sky had turned red with all the crap being kicked up from construction. Huge articulated lorries beeping their horns in frustration at sharing the same one lane as the tiny bikes (Goddamn are they loud). This all went on for about an hour, it was a pretty stressful turn of events. Luckily however, Mu Nei was just round the corner.
Finally I arrived in Mu Nei and found the hotel that Jason had mentioned. It was lovely and had a surprise waiting too
Today, I am going to do some serious lounging and maybe see what delights this place has to offer. I briefly caught one of the local favourites on my way here:
Yeah… Maybe tomorrow.
Marc's Adventures in Vietnam 