Mui Ne Sand Dunes – Offroading, ATVs, Sledding

Mui Ne has some of the craziest sand/soil I’ve ever seen, the reds were darker than I’ve seen even in Australia. The big draw for tourists in Mui Ne, other than the world class kite surfing, is the sand dune tour. We mentioned these tours in the Mui Ne Fairy Stream article, and we also mentioned how the Fairy Stream was more unique and we liked it better, however the sand dunes were a good visit as well. There are 2 sets of dunes the jeeps will take you to, one is white, and one is orange. The better ones in my opinion were the white sand dunes, and that’s what we’re talking about here.

When you get to the dunes there are a bunch of guys there trying to sell you mats so you can slide down the dunes, and also renting “dirt bikes” which are actually Quads / ATV’s (not sure what the difference is between these, but I know these aren’t dirt bikes). The thing that made this fun for us was renting the ATV’s. They tried to sell us the big ones as my friend and I are on the larger end, but we bartered price so they gave us the cheaper smaller ones. I think we ended up paying about 250,000 Vietnamese Dong, or something around 10 USD if I recall correctly.

I’d never ridden an ATV before on sand dunes like this, which is really what made it for me. The quads we got were clearly way too small as we struggled making it up hills, and we look ridiculous on them, but it was still a lot of fun and made for some funny looking videos and photos. We also rented the mats for sand boarding, and we tried this, but it wasn’t really all that fun compared to riding our ATV’s. If you were to take the ATV’s away from this visit it would have only been mediocre, probably still worth doing if you were in Mui Ne, but not worth going out of your way for.

If you’re wondering about the orange dunes, we went to these last because they have a view of the ocean, and we were supposed to watch the sunset from them, but there was no sunset the day we visited due to clouds, so these were really not even worth stopping at. If you’re lucky enough to catch a good sunset they would probably be nice, otherwise they’re not impressive at all after visiting the white sand dunes previously.

Another little tidbit for you if you’re about to visit Mui Ne… if you rent the quads, they may not tell you, but the price you negotiate is not for the allotted time at the dunes, its only for 15 minutes or something around there. When we went to return them, we got in a fight with the people because they tried to say we were late, but failed to mention we had a time limit when we rented them. In the end we denied them additional payment, but it’s never fun to end things on a sour note like that, and it makes things a bit awkward until your jeep is actually pulling away.

Video of an ATV on the Mui Ne Sand Dunes

Mui Ne Sand Dunes Tour Photo Gallery

Mui Ne White Sand Dunes Map