Muine

I've been in a little fishing/beach town called Muine for the last few days. It's a super cool pretty chill place. Kite surfing is huge here, and it's driving me mad!! All I want to do is try it, figure out a way to get involved....but I just can't justify it. It's stupid expensive to try (like $200 for a couple hours on the water) and I know the first part won't even be rewarding, it'll just be learning. So then I started scheming a way to buy a whole kite surfing set up....then I realized now is not the time in my life to start a new expensive sport. So frustrating cuz it looks amazing! Mark my words, some time in my life I'll be into kite surfing...yup.

Today I rented a motorbike and checked out the town....man there are a lot of fishing boats here! I searched a little deeper and found a huge operation of sardine type fish, it's everywhere!! Then I checked out the sand dunes, there are red and white. I hired a rough neck kid named Chuong (he sat on the back of my rented motorbike) to show me around both sand dunes, take me sand sledding, and show me the waterfall. The sand dunes were cool, although I'm much too heavy to slide on the sand carpets...so I would just jump off the little cliffs instead. The waterfall was lame, but the journey there was cool. Had a good time with wee little Chuong.

The harsh part of the day was yet to come. I got into a nasty motorbike accident just a few hours ago. I was taking a left turn, and some dude smoked me on the left side trying to pass me in the oncoming traffic lane. He hit me pretty hard, the next thing I knew I was flying through the air...and my bike was too. The only thing I was thinking was "crap....there is no insurance on this bike!". Luckily (thanks God) I was ok. My arm is swollen and my hand my have a fracture...but other than that I'm good! Some Vietnamese locals saw it happen and made sure I was ok, then a huge yelling match errupted in Vietnamese. About 20 Vietnamese people were gathered around checking out the accident scene for about 1/2 hr, one old guy got so mad at the guy who hit me that he took away the guys keys! I think the guy was going to leave the accident, and I think the old guy wasn't having it, he knew it wasn't my fault. I thought we were waiting for the cops to show up....but after about 1/2 hr everyone left....including someone with my bike! (it was in like 3 pieces). I just hung out with a family at the scene for a while...they didn't speak any English. Some guy came up after and said they took my bike to fix, that they would bring it to my guest house tomorrow. Who knows...I have no phone #'s or names of anyone who took my bike....I'm just hoping for the best...that it comes to me tomorrow fixed...cuz the guy I rented it from is coming tomorrow to pick it up in the morning and he doesn't speak a ton of English. I'm going to have to communicate a crashing noise to him...hahahahaha....really not that funny. I hope I don't have to pay for anything. I really think the old guy at the scene argued so much that it was the other guys fault...and now he has to pay for my bike to get fixed. I was talking to an English couple who live in HCMC and they said that almost always once the police get involved, the foreigner always has to pay for both vehicles...even if it's not their fault. We shall see. I'm just lucky to have walked away from this thing.

A crap load of fishing boats!


Yeeehhaaawwww!!





Me and my roughneck friend - Chuong.


Strange scene.


Lotsa little fish.


This one made me laugh.