Massive structures made from such small grains of sand, dunes have always intrigued me. The beach a few minutes away from where I grew up has them, and their slopes gracefully frame the rough sea. The dunes where why I wanted to come to Mui Ne. Red dunes. I’ve seen grey ones and tan ones, but never red. So we decided to stop here for a day since it was on our way north anyways. In the morning we caught two xe om (motorbikes) to take us to the dunes.

In hindsight, we probably could have found the place on our own, but at the time we weren’t sure. I read a book once (I think Monkey bridge by Lan Cao) that described a few places in Vietnam, one of which was a fish sauce village. We passed through one on the way through the dunes—I could tell by the smell before I saw the shops, and could picture the scene in the book happening in a place just like that. Shortly afterward, the dunes were in sight. As Matt and I got off the bikes and started walking toward the dunes, we could see a handful of little kids running towards us with plastic sleds. They followed us up the dunes, pitching their services. “My name Kim. If you go twice, go with Kim.” “Where you from? I from New York,” said one little girl (obviously not). “How old are you?” I gave my age. “Oh, you look so much younger,” nice try kid, I thought, but I’m not trying to look like I’m 19.

Despite all the sweet talking and their natural cuteness, Matt and I declined to pay their inflated prices for unlimited sledding, but still decided (well, I made Matt do it) to pay a little bit to have one try each. The girls began to prepare a path for our sleds by throwing sand down the dune to decrease the friction for when we slid down. Matt went first, with the help of a push from one of the girls, and I followed. It was fun. The kids got all pouty when we refused to go again, but were quickly distracted by a large sand beetle I found. Matt and I continued roaming the dunes for a little bit. It was beautiful to see the wavy marks in the sand caused by the strong wind, echoing the larger shape of the dunes themselves. But it was hot and after about 30 or 40 minutes at the dunes, we walked back to the road to head back to our hotel. I don’t know why, but for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to try rolling down one of the dunes. It was a bumpy and sandy way down. Somewhat thrilling I guess, but mostly I was just dizzy and very sandy. I didn’t try it again.