Hey guys! I am back with another coffee post while sipping on my mid-day coffee on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Hope you enjoy this!
Be&John Coffee-187B Dien Bien Phu, D.1, HCMC (opposite Le Van Tam Park)
Me and my friend stumbled here on another lazy afternoon after a big lunch, and the place has definitely made us want to come back several times more. Located right across Le Van Tam park, Be&John Coffee looks small on the outside but once you step inside, the place opens up a lot more space. After ordering our drinks, we headed upstairs to the second floor
Wall arts – first floorThis is so trueand so interesting
There are a couple of sofas, chairs and tables on the second floors for you to choose from. Their wall arts are simple, but suit the place well. Their glass windows which overlook the park on one side and a Hue restaurant with the old-fashioned Vietnamese architecture on the other side are definitely my favorite part of this coffee shop. It gives me a calming feeling when sunshine hits every corner of the room, and wherever you look there’s fine view, whether it’s the relaxing green of the trees or the nostalgic old house that resembles my grandparents’ house when I was little.
They also have a third floor with outside seats, and long tables for meeting with friends, colleagues or working. I didn’t take any photo of the third floor because there were a lot of people but next time, I definitely will!
Drinks and food
I ordered a Latte and my friend a Caramel Macchiato, they were both nice with decent price (40,000VND). The second time I came there, I had a Cafe sua da size large for 35,000 VND and it was delicious and A LOT – you know, truly a “size large” cup of coffee, not a large cup of ice with “size medium” amount of coffee, and I love it. Their chicken salad is good quality with the price of 39,000VND
Heyyyy everyone! I am so sorry I have been neglected this blog for a while, I was crazily busy with working and struggling with some family issues as well. But well, what do they say? When you are sad, just keep traveling! (and writing, too)
So I am back with some tips and stories from my weekend get-away trip with my friends to Mui Ne – Phan Thiet. Enjoy and feel free to comment if you want to know more!
1.Location
Phan Thiet is located in south-eastern Vietnam, about 200km from Hochiminh City. It’s the capital city of Binh Thuan province. On my first time traveling here I stayed with my family in a resort in Phan Thiet city, but to be honest there’s not that much to see here. So this time me and my friends decided to head straight to Mui Ne – a coastal resort town of Phan Thiet, where some of the most beautiful beaches are.
You can find more information on Phan Thiet and Mui Ne here:
Mui Ne: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C5%A9i_N%C3%A9
2. Stay.
We stayed in a Muine Sports Hotel, which is one of the Sport Hotel chain. They are pretty much like the Backpackers Hostel chain, but this one is Vietnamese-run. The hotel is of good price, they have everything from private, double and triple rooms to female and mixed dorms. You can find them here: http://muinehotelsports.com/en/
We stayed in a triple room with the price of around 1,600,000VND ($73) per night, which is actually a bit higher than the normal price since it’s national holiday season, but still good. The hotel is in a small alley on the main street of Mui Ne, where all the restaurants, bars, pubs, clothing stores and everything else is, so it’s quite convenient. They have a sports bar, a pool and a tour-booking table. The manager speaks English and a little bit Japanese, and probably Russian as well.
3. Transportation.
Phuong Trang is definitely the best option to travel anywhere in the south of Vietnam, but we decided on going to Muine too late to buy the ticket. So if you plan about a month ahead and it’s not on weekends or holidays, you should be able to get the tickets here https://futabus.vn/en-US.
We traveled back and forth between Saigon and Muine by Hanh Cafe’s sleeping bus with the price of 200,000 VND (again, because it’s holiday season). If you travel on weekdays and not during high season, it should be only 120,000VND. You can buy the tickets directly from their office on Pham Ngu Lao street (229 Pham Ngu Lao, D.1). Otherwise, you can walk along Pham Ngu Lao street and just check with any tour office on the road, they all have tickets to Muine. The trip took 5 hours to Muine and 4 hours on the way back, the bus did leave on time which I appreciate.
Once you’re in Muine, like any other tourist cities of Vietnam, you can always rent a motorbike, a bike, or use cab to get around. We went around by cab most of the time. It’s very easy to get a cab on the main street of Muine, even during weekend or at night. The fare is cheaper than Hanoi and Saigon.
4. Visit
We only stayed in Muine for 2 days and 1 night so our schedule was a bit crazy. If you have more than 2 days, I don’t recommend following this schedule.
1 st day:
We arrived in Muine at 1pm, and we headed to lunch right away. Asked the taxi driver to take you to Bi Bo restaurant, they all know where it is. The restaurant served good quality seafood with reasonable price. We had a table full of food, way too much for 3 girls but we did finish them all ’cause they were really delicious. And this table of food cost only 300,000VND/ person ($15)
Posanu Cham Tower
After lunch, we went back to the hotel for a nap, then headed to the Posanu Cham Tower, 30km from Muine, to watch the sunset. Ticket to the Cham Tower is 10,000VND/person. Posanu Cham Tower is consisted of 3 different towers that worshipped different gods and goddesses, and a field full of tombstones. Dated as far back as the 9th century, the towers were built without using any cements or anything that we know of that could possibly glue the stones together, so how did Cham people build them is still a mystery ’till now.
The Posanu Cham Tower offers a stunning view of the whole Phan Thiet city, and you can watch the sun slowly going down on the city from there.
On the top of the hill, there’s a ruined palace where Han Mac Tu – a famous poet of Vietnam in the 1900s went to live when he suffered from leprosy.
We hanged around there for like 1 hour, taking photos and walking around, then headed back to Muine for dinner. There are several restaurants by the sea where you can go “seafood shopping”, meaning you pick whatever sea creatures you want to eat, they will catch them alive and show them to you. The most famous dish in Muine is lobster because it’s fresh (literally they are still swimming) and fairly cheap. A really cool experience if you have never gone “seafood shopping” before.
Crab with mandarine sauce, picked out by me while the crabs were still alive and then cooked right after that
After dinner, it’s time to check out Muine’s nightlife. Muine has become a backpacker town , so there are several different bars withing walking distance from each other. The taxi driver told us that they are all foreigner-run. I would not go into details about each bar because they were pretty much the same as any other bar you will find in Vietnam, only cheaper and you have a view to the beach. If you want to have fun, make sure you’re drunk (we did have fun)
2nd day
2nd day started as early as 4am because we booked a tour to visit four most famous places in Muine. I knew that was a wrong choice to take that tequila shot the night before, but to my surprise I woke up just fine even though I only got 3 hours of sleep and was drinking the night before.
Anyhow, we managed to drag ourselves out of the hotel and on the Jeep (yep, a jeep) for that tour. The tour costs 600,000VND and the Jeep could carry up to 4 people. Our schedule was White Sand Dunes (to watch the sunrise) – Red Sand Dunes – Fishing Village – Fairy Stream. You could also easily extend the tour to five, even six places, but you would probably have to rush through it.
White Sand Dunes and beautiful sunrise.
We arrived at the White Sand Dunes at about 5am, just in time for the sunrise. You can totally climb to the top of the sand dunes, but we were feeling lazy (yep, tequila), so we rent a 3-wheel motorcycle and a guy rode us to the top of the dune. It cost 600,000 for 3-4 people as well. It was quite a dangerous ride, because he was riding at ridiculously fast speed, we went up and down and up steep hill and there was nothing to secure that we would be safe. But it was a lot of fun. And the sunrise was beautiful. If you’re lucky and come to Muine on the lotus blossoming season, White Sand Dunes will be even more beautiful with a lake full of full blossomed white lotus.
Red Sand Dunes.
Red Sand Dunes is where you could do the sand sliding, which just means you sitting on a cardboard and slide down. There are people and kids with cardboards that will follow you until you feel so annoyed you have to take a ride. If you really don’t feel like doing it, just ignore them completely and show no interest to whatever they say. If you do feel like sand sliding then remember to bargain, it’s 30,000VND for one cardboard and you can slide as many times as you want to.
Fishing Village.
Fishing Village is beautiful and very Vietnamese. It’s the scene that appeared in our Vietnamese book at school. The big sea is full of colorful round boats (I don’t know the word for them), on the seaside are women selling what their husbands and sons bring home after a long night of fishing. Beautiful view, and you can totally buy some fresh seafood there.
Fairy Stream
Fairy Stream was our last stop. I honestly didn’t have much of an impression with this place. It’s a narrow, fairly long stream (2.5km I believe), and as you walk along the stream there are beautiful rocks and trees on the sides. Somehow it feels to me like I was walking down Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, but instead of walking on the ground it’s water.
After that, we went back to the hotel to get some sleep, then we headed to Hon Ghenh only to be surprised and overwhelmed by its beauty. Hon Ghenh is really so, so beautiful with its yellow sand and crystal clear water. If I had known it better I would have spent a whole day here.
So here they are, all the highlights from my trip to Muine in 2 days. I hope you guys enjoy reading this. If you need any further information, let me know at the comment section and I will try my best to answer them!
Around the globe 