July 28 to August 1st
From Hoi An, we take a night bus to Da Nang. We wait for it at an unmarked bus stop, sitting next to other backpackers. Two of them ask « are you together? », and we stutter. We are…for now…I guess…It’s an on-hold break-up, with 10 days notice for the mandatory crying and sorting shit out period.
It’s the “luxury” bus, that we treated ourselves to because of break up and stuff. It sucks terribly. I regret the nice seats of the super cheap train to Hoi An: on the bus, we have to be lying down, with a one meter gap between us, because that is the smartest way to design a bus. Those weren’t the conditions to watch Eat, Pray, Love, but we did anyway, because I wanted him to get why I quoted Ketut so much.
You sit in silence, and smile. Not so easy, Liz. Smile with face, smile with mind, even smile in liver. See you later, alligator.
The bus company was called Hanh Café. Do not use it, ever. They were late, they were rude, they drove like maniacs (and I’m saying that after 2 months of motorbikes and night buses), they treated us like cattle, and the air con was too cold. When I googled them afterwards to leave the worst review I could wherever I could, I just found comments of people saying “Beware of Hanh Café“. After our last trip with them I was so mad that, to Michael’s annoyed dismay, I resorted to telling people queuing in the Hanh Café shop to not give them money.
The bus got us to Da Nang. The plan was to stay there from 8am to 4pm and then take another bus to Mui Ne, where we had booked a room. But the sleepless night had exhausted us so much so we decided to go to Mui Ne right away.
About three weeks earlier, I’d met a guy in Kuala Lumpur who had lived in Vietnam many years, and had worked there as a travel agent. I had told him I like beautiful, authentic places, and I wanted somewhere relaxing to go to with my partner – considering that we weren’t doing so well and we might have troubled minds when we get there. He said “Mui Ne is gonna be your jam”, and I believed him. I could have researched that better, but I wanted something easy, and google said the beaches were paradisiac.
Mui Ne does have beautiful beaches. But every single one of them belongs to a resort. Mui Ne is a long street with expensive resorts on one side and restaurants that all have the same menu on the other side. We walked there looking for a relaxing piece of beach and I actually made a scene to the speechless buildings because of capitalism and ruining the beauty of things and all that shit.
We had booked a hostel in Mui Ne for three nights, one of which would be my birthday night. And I know we should have changed those plans to find somewhere better to hang out, but we were tired, and fairly busy watching TV shows and crying. The good news was that our little hostel room had been upgraded for no apparent reason to a gorgeous suite with a room for the shower AND a room for the toilet, a living room area and a massive bed. It was even in a different area of the hostel called “The Villa”, where the pool was only shared between the wealthy people (we only saw one person near the pool, once, so we might as well call it our pool). They gave us fresh towels and complimentary soap. Luxury.
So we stayed in Mui Ne. After walking around and ranting for a bit, we decided to go on day trips. We spent a day on motorbikes to go see a giant reclining Buddha on top of a mountain, and a few temples.
On my birthday, we woke up at 4 to get on a jeep with a bunch of other sleepy tourists, and headed to see the sand dunes at sunrise. It took a bit of will power to ignore the tremendous noise of the rental quads that a hord of tourists spent hundreds of Dongs on. But after walking in the sand to get away from them, we got an amazing view. It was easy enough to imagine the dunes were quiet and peaceful, while the sun took them out of their blue-grey mist and into a bright, beautiful yellow. I didn’t resist the impulse to roll down one of the sand hills, hence demonstrating my incredible ability to forget that sand is made of grains that can invade your mouth, nose and ears if you throw yourself at it. It was fun, though, and, according to Michael who stayed at the top of the hill with my stuff, entertainingly undignified. When we reached the second bunch of dunes, orange and even more packed with selfie sticks holding on to one or two humans each, we were exhausted. We watched the landscape and did some of our mandatory daily crying. The jeep then took us to a fishing village, our shortest but my favorite stop of the day: it was a good opportunity to buy delicious cheap food and exchange smiles with the old lady who sold it to me.
We crashed back on the massive hotel bed for a while, before heading out to grab my birthday lunch in an Italian restaurant. It was more food than we could handle, but oh the delicious wood fired pizza. I spoke Italian with the boss, who offered to give us a free dessert for my birthday. We couldn’t possibly eat anything more, but we promised to come back the next day.
Our last day in Mui Ne was spent eating by the pool, watching stuff, eating some more at the Italian restaurant. The waitress forgot to give us the free desert and we didn’t remind her – we were too happy to eat our chocolate mousse and tiramisu. When the boss realized, he actually offered to give us the money back, cash. We settled for a free lemonade to go, that I sipped while we walked to the resort-eaten beach one last time.
The Hanh Café bus was several hours late. The staff hurried us inside and told us to take any seat « quick, quick ». No hello, no sorry you waited in the sun for 3 hours. It turned out well for us, because we could grab the back seats, the only ones that aren’t a meter apart. We watched movies and performed the final act of the modern day break up: we shared files. I pillaged his music and movies, and we exchanged pictures. We read the text I had written about us, and cried. We talked a lot. It was salutary, but exhausting.
We stopped on the way to buy food and use the toilet, and the break was welcome. We had drained each other with words. I bought colorful fruit and sweet treats, stuff that had peanuts and/or durian in them and tasted horrible but delightfully special.
Finding Love at Home and Across the World 
