On The Road Again: Hoo-ray! I'm in Mui Ne!

Big Red: gettin' into the dirt bikes.
 Still can't imagine actually jumping anything on it.

Time to bid a fond farewell to HCMC. But how to get out through the shitstorm that is morning rush hour? No problemo. My friends at the moto shop had promised someone would be happy to escort me to the Cat Lai ferry. So when I arrived, I naturally turned to the Alpha Male, who promptly turned and pointed at the toothless, wizened grandpa I'd seen yesterday, hanging around the shop, clad only in a pair of tattered board shorts.
"You gotta be shitting me!" I thought. " This guy probably can't even find his way home at night."

Wrong again. Soon enough , Toothless Old Guy & I were whizzing our way through a labyrinth of streets. As a matter of fact, he's so bored by the whole exercise, he's lighting smokes at stop lights & riding with one hand.  30 minutes later, he's giving me the grin as he deposits me at the ferry.

Here we are on the ferry, having been released from our holding pen. See how we can go ANYWHERE?

Unfortunately my first taste of the road was, for all intents and purposes, completely unmemorable (i.e. soul-suckingly boring and ugly), save the short run from the main highway to the Van Ke lighthouse, which seems to have been preserved as an example for a future exhibition of the results of American carpet bombing.

Luckily, my expectations for the delightful seaside resort of Mui Ne were realistically low, and I was not disappointed. As with most other Third World beaches, they've adhered to the tried and true formula:
1. Find a gorgeous, palm tree-lined beach
2. Throw up as much shit as you can as quickly and cheaply as you can. Make sure it has no aesthetic value and does not bear an even vague resemblance to the local architecture or customs.
3. If you can find a "gimmick", so much the better. Milk it for all it's worth.
4. Sit back and watch the suckers and their US dollars roll in.

And BINGO! You have Mui Ne, the Kite Surfing Capital of SE Asia.

As I said, not a problem for me. The beach is long enough to walk on, the only dangers/annoyances being having your head removed from your body by the kite-strings of all the numb-nuts walking them up & down the beach or being crushed in the water when Johnny Cool drops down from his chick-impressing leap 20 feet in the air.

The majority of my fellow travellers seem to be equally divided between Eastern Europeans ( who, unfortunately for many of them, seem to bear a striking resemblance to a shaved bear - the breadth, the gut, the flat-top head & Marine-length hair, the skimpy bathing suit. And these are the women) and cool backpacker dudes. Thankfully, not a sign of my friends, the Chinese.

Pause here for potentially politically-incorrect seemingly-racist aside. I'm not making any value judgements here. I'm just looking for clues:
Why are they so unbelievably LOUD all the time? Being anywhere in their vicinity is like a cross between standing in the middle of a busy runway and refereeing a county hog-calling competition. Are they ALL deaf?

Why do they expel bodily fluids in public? What can top having a fellow guest both blow his nose and spit into the pool while you're sharing it with him?

Why do they hang their laundry on any object in their vicinity? It's NOT happenstance because they all carry their own laundry lines with them. The manager at my hotel said they actually "borrowed" two of her workers' ladders to set up a clothesline.

Why are they so insufferably rude, particularly to workers, but really to anyone who gets in their way?

Please, anyone who can answer these questions, feel free to enlighten me. Just asking...

By a complete fluke, (and, yes because I was a tad bored) I happened to ride about 10 km up the road (bypassing "The Fairy Stream") and stumbled on this completely untouristy fishing village. Sweet.

BTW: Those weird round fibreglass "tubs" are coracles. They can actually maneuver them like you wouldn't believe & use them for fishing.

So...two relaxing days in the bosom of the tourist holocaust. Stay tuned. In our next episode, I'll share both my drive to (pleasant, in general) and my day in Dalat.
Hint: I will be referring to it as
 "Dull-at". Catch ma drift?