Kite-surfing in Mui Ne and Scuba Diving in Nha Trang

The last two weeks have been all about water-sports for me. Kite-surfing in Mui Ne, Vietnam and Scuba Diving in Nha Trang, Vietnam.
After leaving Ho Chi Minh City, my next stop was in Mui Ne, Vietnam, about a five hour bus ride away. I took a late afternoon bus out of HCM, so by the time I arrived in Mui Ne it was already late. It's not much fun searching around for the perfect place to stay in the middle of the night, so I just picked a place that sounded good from what I had read in Lonely Planet. It was a beautiful room with a balcony that hung over the water and I spent a good couple of hours just sitting out there listening to the waves crash upon the shore. Very peaceful. Mui Ne is a beatiful little beachtown, very well set up for tourism with accomodations ranging from budget to very high-end. I was there during the low-season so the place was somewhat quiet, but this just made the beautiful beaches all that more enjoyable. Mui Ne is also the premier water-sport destination in Vietnam with the weather and location making in ideal for wind sports such as kite-surfing and windsurfing.
The following morning I took a nice long walk for my never ending search for a good cup of coffee and came across a place called "Fly Kite-surfing school". I was intrigued. Kite-surfng is something that always appealed to me, so I thought I would stop in and take a look at what was going on. Wasn't much wind that morning so I wasn't able to watch anybody kite-surf, but Liz, one of the owners/instructors of "Fly" came over and started giving me the sales pitch. At this point I was only curious and had no real intentions of signing up for lessons right away, so I told her I would think it over and get back to her. I continued on my walk thinking about how cool it would be to learn how to kite-surf and within 20 minutes had convinced myself that if I didn't do it now, then when? I turned around and went back to Fly and signed up. Liz told me to come back in about an hour as there was somebody else who was thinking about taking lessons as well and it would be nice to get us started at the same time. She also told me where I could get a good cup of coffee - about a half kilo. up the road at a place called Joe's Art Cafe. Great coffee and a very friendly staff with whom I became good friends with over the following week and a half.
I returned an hour later for my first lesson. I had signed up for a 5 hour package and the first hour was spent just on learning about wind conditions, kite set up, and self-rescue. No actual water time involved at this point. The following day, when the wind was cooperating, we practiced flying the kites on the beach, then later took them out into the water to "body-drag", which is basically flying the kite while in the water, tacking back and forth while the kite drags you through it. It was quite fun actually, but at this point I had realized that kite-surfing wasn't something I was going to master in just a five hour course. This was going to take some practice!
I spent the next week hoping the wind and weather would cooperate so that I could continue my lessons, but after being in Mui Ne for about ten days I realized that I could spend the next month waiting for that to happen. My visa was about to expire in a few days and I still had places I wanted to visit. It was time to move on. I did manage to complete 4 of the 5 hours I signed up for and got a real good taste for what kite-surfing is all about. Definitely something I will continue to persue.
Mui Ne was great. The place is beautiful, but often times its the people you meet along the way that make a place what it is. Bruce, the fellow Canadian taking lessons with me; Jeff and Liz our instructors who told us about the poker tournaments we played in and later took our money; Twee and John, the owners of Vietnam-Austria House (a place I moved to later to be closer to where I was taking lessons) with whom I had dinner and beers with on many nights; and Nhieu from the coffee shop, who also worked at the restaurant next door from me where we played many a game of pool. All these people helped make my stay in Mui Ne just that much better! I will be back to visit you all one day.

Nha Trang was nice too. Also a beach town, but more of a city-like atmosphere and all the tourists to go with it. The beach was ok, but the sand is very coarse and there is the constant flow of people trying to sell you books, fruit, gum, cotton-swabs, or whatever. I quickly learned that the best way to enjoy the beach in Nha Trang was to dish out a little cash for one of the comfy lounge cairs offered by the many bar/huts along the beach. The hawkers aren't allowed to bother the customers there so it makes hanging out at the beach much more peaceful.
After a couple of days lounging on the beach, I decided I would do some diving. I had heard that Nha Trang has some of the best diving in all of Vietnam so I wanted to check it out. I went to Amigos Divers and signed up for a dive trip the next day. They were to pick me up at my hotel the following morning at 7:15 am, but by 8 am nobody had showed up. Turns out they couldn't find my hotel (to their credit, it was a little hard to find), so I re-scheduled for the following day. The diving that day was quite nice, so I decided to stay another day and go out diving again. I convinced the owner to let me go the second day for half-price. The second day there were only two of us diving (a russian guy that was with us the day before), so we went out to a more remote dive site. Day two turned out to be even better than the first - definitely worth hanging around for. And certainly cant beat the price - two days of diving for only $60.
After diving I hung out on the beach for a bit, then went back to my hotel to pack up. I had booked an overnight sleeper bus for the trip to Hoi An and it was time to go. The bus trip turned out to be a nightmare... more on that later.