Living it up with Team Australia

After travelling on our own for more than a month, it was with great expectations that we got on the train to Phan Thiet to join our dear friend Dougie's fiftieth birthday holiday party. Dougie, his Manly childhood friend Dean and Dean's girlfriend Kate, had booked an expensive resort on the way to Mui Ne, that doubled our accommodation budget. Therefore we booked the first two nights in a cute and inexpensive place right next to Mui Ne but 6km away from them. Our place was actually quite nice, beach front and with a small swimming pool and swings for Flora, but was deserted (we think we were the only customers), a bit tired, the beach had literally no sand during high tide, and more importantly, we were way too far from the others. So after hanging around with them in their absolutely stunning hotel for two days, and realising that Dougie had been upgraded to an amazing room and after getting tired of using taxis up and down, we used our best financial creativity and moved to the gorgeous Blue Ocean Resort.
The nine days spent in

Mui Ne were truly amazing! Dougie was in great form, Dean and Kate revealed to be a very sweet, warm and fun couple for whom Flora felt an immediate connection. We had everything we could want. An amazing hotel with a room only matched by Christina's in Hoi An, a beautiful and often windy beach populated with several kite surfers, nice restaurants around, happy hour with great cocktails at the resort, Danny's Pub to watch football and play pool, Joe's Bar for live music and to get

wasted on Dougie's birthday, idyllic spots for Flora's learning, the Fairy Stream (a stream of water that we walked through for about an hour from the beach to a refreshing waterfall cut through a ravine of impressive red and orange sand) and great Aussie company.
At the end of our stay, we got on another train to Ho Chi Minh where we spent one last night in Vietnam, just in time for a great dinner in a sophisticated restaurant. The old Saigon seemed more modern, very busy but with less hostile traffic than Hanoi, marking a perfect end for our Vietnamese adventure.