The goal for the day was to reach Dalat up in the highlands and since it is fairly close to Mui Ne I decided to take it easy and do some sightseeing along the way. I started with the Po Shanu Cham Towers, three ancient brick towers west of Mui Ne that are still used for worshipping. I know I will see lots of old temples during my travels but these were the first.

  • The small tower…
  • …and the big one.

I found out yesterday that there are actually two large sand dunes in Mui Ne, the red one and the white one, the one I visited yesterday was the red one so today I went to check out the white one. The dunes are not quite so photogenic as the red ones, but makes up for that by the fact that you can go out on four wheel motorbikes or little jeeps and drive around.  I took the four wheeler and it was quite a wild ride, especially after my Vietnamese guide took over the controls. I paid 400000 VND (about 18 USD) for twenty minutes of riding, and most of that I wasn’t allowed to drive for myself,  I think it’s a bit overpriced.  Unless you really want to ride a four wheeler through a sand dunes, I recommend you skip this one, just go to the red dune instead.

  • On the way to the dunes
  • Me and the four wheeler 
  • Some views of the white dunes.

When I was done with the sand dunes was almost noon, so I set off towards Dalat. After a short while the road entered the real countryside with only few houses here and there. Soon enough I was riding up snaking mountain roads, with some truly spectacular views.

  • View on the way up
  • The bike with tea gardens in the distance 
  • I met these fellows at a small cafe, they wanted to drink beer with me but I had to decline
  • On the highlands 
  • Highland lake

Because I made so many stops along the way, there wasn’t any time left for sightseeing in Dalat, I’ll have to postpone that ·until tomorrow.