In Good Company - Mui Ne

After 3 days on the road with Binh, I was starting to crave solitude. I arrived in Mui Ne, a beach town close to the city of Phan Thiet, in the late afternoon, and found a really nice room with a balcony overlooking an undeveloped lot of land scattered with palm trees. The owner of the Tuan Loan guesthouse, recommended to me by my guide, was Vietnamese-Canadian, a lovely woman who had lived in Victoria for several years before divorcing her Canadian husband and returning to Vietnam. She was eager to chat about BC and was exceptionally hospitable - offering me food, letting me play with her 5 week old Chihuahua puppy, and even offering to take me on a shopping trip to town. I declined politely and instead, grabbed some amazingly cheap food and wandered up and down the main road a little to get my bearings. I went for a romantic walk at sunset with myself and picked up a few sea shells along the way - the whole beach was covered in brightly colored flat shells and the swirly snail shells you see in kids picture books about the beach. For some reason it reminded me of this little picture book "Raggedy Ann goes to the Sea Shore" that I used to read as a little kid - quite picturesque. I watched the little wicker bowl fishing boats float into shore with their daily catch while families waited onshore to offload baskets of anchovy-sized fish (to make into fish sauce, most likely) until it got dark and the beach emptied.

I could have gone to one of the many backpacker guesthouses or the little restaurant/pubs, but all I wanted to do was be alone and delve deeper into my book "Catfish and Mandala" by Andrew X Pham (It's amazing by the way, you should read it). I grabbed a beer from the restaurant at dinner and set up camp on my balcony underneath palm trees. I realized at some point that evening that I had lost my Swiss army knife and had a bit of an issue opening the beer, but managed to track one down and was extremely contented. It dawned on me then that I had learned to enjoy my own company once again. At the start of this trip, after parting ways with Doyle and his family, and the "BAM" girls from back home, I thought I'd feel a bit lonely, but such was not the case. I plugged into my iPod - loaded with Thievery Corporation, Death Cab for Cutie, the Shins, Jack Johnson, Neil Young, John Mayer and a bunch of relaxing tunes - and had a lovely evening reading my book with my Saigon beer.

After a lazy morning to catch up on sleep, I walked up "Fairy Stream" - a very shallow creek edged by palm trees on one side and steep red sand banks on the other. The scenery was amazing and somehow appeared larger than it really was, making for some cool photos. The stream was pretty empty so I tried to work on self-portaits so I might have photographic proof that I was actually in Asia... not easy with a giant SLR. I ran into the girls from New Zealand once more - a total fluke - and had lunch with them before they took off to catch a bus South to Saigon. I don't have anything else to report of my time spent in Mui Ne other than amazing sunsets over the beach in the evenings, afternoons in the sun and cold beers and good music on my balcony at night. That, and the realization that even traveling solo, I am in good company.