...there we are riding the motorbike between the red and the white sand dunes outside of Mui Ne, a distance of about 30 Kms along a mainly deserted road. There is a long stretch of superb beach to our left and to our right there are nothing but scrubby sand hills supporting nothing except the occasional goatherd perched in some makeshift hut in the middle of an arid landscape.

We are sitting on about 80 Kms per hour and enjoying the solitude of the ride, the clear blue sky and the equally clear beach and blue ocean are a pleasure to our jaded city bound eyes. I hear a bike horn sound behind me and glance into the rear-view mirror to see a Honda Dream bearing down on us. The tooting gets louder and I begin thinking to myself, “Yes, yes, I know you’re there, you don’t need to keep on so.”

The bike draws alongside and I see that there is a Vietnamese man driving and that he has a Vietnamese lady complete with conical hat on the back. I notice that the lady is holding two boards full of sunglasses, cigarette lighters, key rings and all sorts of souvenirs that they are no doubt transporting to try and flog at the next tourist stop and these are all flapping madly in the breeze.  To our delight and amusement the lady looks over at us and smiling from beneath her face mask she indicates a particular pair of sunglasses and gives us the universally recognised sign of “Would you like to purchase these?”

The driver of their bike backs off a bit so that we can view the merchandise but we crack up laughing and indicate that we are not interested, but hey that was a damn good try at 80 KPH down the highway. They too got the joke and after a few laughs and gesticulations backwards and forwards they pulled off into a side road with a friendly wave.

Classic stuff and we are sorry now that we didn’t negotiate a price and try to conclude the sale while on the move.

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