Double Impact

Vietnam’s M?i Né mashes up tropical beauty with touches of Little Moscow

The storefront sign reads: ????????.

Now, one of us is monolingual, the other has a touch of dyslexia, and we’re both standing on the same southern Vietnamese coast, but we’re 100 percent certain that the sign is neither bizarro English nor bad Vietnamese, and that’s because we are in M?i Né, a one-road resort town defined by gusting sea winds, sand dunes and Russian snowbirds.

Located almost exactly between party beach Nha Trang and party city HCMC (aka Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon), M?i Né has become increasingly popular as a Russian winter getaway (thanks to ???????? or “tourist agencies”) and as the wind sport destination in Southeast Asia due to consistently strong sea breezes for more than half the year. Experienced kiteboarders and windsurfers flock to this town between October and May for a chance to launch off M?i Né’s ever-shrinking beaches and make serious hang time, while beginners simply want to survive the first wipeout with dignity. The surge of the curious has given rise to several kitesurfing schools and shops, all easily identified by the presence of tan, toned instructors effortlessly assisting the floundering.

If the exhilaration/terror of being dragged by a kite over deep water and swimming tourists doesn’t appeal, then there are M?i Né’s red sand and white sand dunes just outside of town. In an ironic twist, the sandiest dunes don’t actually touch water, as M?i Né beaches are subject to persistent heavy erosion that results in large stretches of concrete-tiled “beach,” thin swaths of real beach, and luxuriously maintained but exclusive resort beach.

The red dunes rise up quite suddenly from the roadside and are, not surprisingly, reddish, pounded by wind and manned by cute Vietnamese kids offering plastic sheets for “sand surfing” (at a small fee, of course). We learned two very important lessons at the red dunes, both of which are blindingly obvious in hindsight, but hey, we were caught up in the joy of travel: 1) sand surfing is a sure-fire way to fill your netherbits with particulate matter that you will continue to discover for several days afterwards, and 2) taking photos of atmospheric sand dunes in a windstorm is guaranteed to sand-blast your camera.

The white dunes were more forgiving, if not a little harder to find. For those of us whose sand dune experience is limited to beach berms and movies, the white dunes are pretty amazing. Imagine taking thousands of tons of white sand, dropping them on a giant patch of flat scrub brush, and letting the results ripple beautifully. Granted, it’s not vast like the Sahara or the Gobi, but if you sit strategically between dunes—perhaps resting from the arduous climb—you could easily convince yourself that a nomad camel caravan is about to crest the hill.

Once you’ve worked up a massive appetite cavorting in the sand, head back to town for a gut-bursting culinary experience. As previously mentioned, there’s just one main road going through M?i Né, and as evening falls, you will find several open air seafood “restaurants” setting up on the beach side of the road. Owing much to its original identity as a fishing village, these dining establishments feature an impressive array of the day’s catch, including giant tiger prawns, shark, eel, periwinkle snails, conch, scallops and, of course, fish. It’s a simple affair: select your [still moving] dishes and then turn away as the barbeque man delivers the death blow via a quick THWAP! on the ground. Drinks are cold, condiments simple, tissues plenty and the seafood, ridiculously cheap and flavorful.

When it’s time to medicate, the green is easy enough to find via xe om (motorcycle taxi) drivers—who also gladly offer prostitutes as well—and the cannot-be-specifically-named shishka clubs. However, local quality is generally mediocre, sporting more than the occasional seed, twig and whatnot, and the bribe price can be disproportionately high if the taxi driver you bought your stash from decides to turn around and report you to the police. Thus, many travelers pack their own.

The quirks of M?i Né—wind surfing near sandless beaches; sand surfing on inland dunes; gorging on affordable bounty from the sea; watching leggy Russian beauties catwalk between their 5-star resort and the Russian-owned trinket store in dental floss bikinis and stilettos—combine for a unique Vietnamese-cum-Little Moscow experience. Have at it.