Mui Ne Flying Sand Dunes

The sand here does not stand still. That is the first thing to know about the Đồi Cát Bay dunes at Mũi Né.

The name means the hill of flying sand. But "flying" does not mean that a whole hill travels from one place to another. It is the wind, steady and patient, that redraws the shape of the dune after every blow. Vietnam's national tourism database says that after a night of strong wind, the dunes can look completely different from before. Other reports note that their shape changes by the hour and by the day. So a visitor who arrives at dawn and one who arrives in the late afternoon see two different pictures of the same place.

The dunes lie in Mũi Né ward, in the Phan Thiết area. That area is now part of Lâm Đồng Province. The dunes are the best known sand site along this stretch of coast, more than 25 kilometers northeast of central Phan Thiết, according to local tourism sources.

The sand here is not only the plain yellow of ordinary sand. It comes in many shades: yellow, ivory white, grayish white, dark red and pale red, all mixed together. At dawn or late in the afternoon, when the sun comes in low and slanting, the layers of color stand out and shift with every angle. That is why many people also call the place Đồi Hồng or Đồi Cát Hồng, which mean Pink Hill and Pink Sand Hill. These are tourist names in common use, not official administrative names.

As for geology, researchers quoted by the Bình Thuận newspaper say that the red dunes of this region are sediment laid down by wind and sea. They formed during the Quaternary period, tied to the sea rising and falling over millions of years. The dunes did not appear in a single morning. They are the product of geological and climate processes that built up over a very long time.

Not many people know that the dunes are also a heritage site under legal protection. In 2019, the Provincial People's Committee of Bình Thuận issued Decision 2812. It listed the place as a provincial heritage site. The protected area covers 57.4 hectares in all. The first protection zone is 35.4 hectares, and the second is 22 hectares. The heritage file came from surveys in 2018 and 2019, carried out by the Bình Thuận Museum with other agencies.

Beyond geology and scenery, the area has sand-country plants of its own. Researchers have counted 96 plant species there. They belong to 92 genera and 54 families. These sparse but tough plants hold the sand in place and keep the dune steady through each windy season.

Vietnam's national tourism authority points to a scientific workshop held in 2019 about the dunes. There, researchers explained that the shape of a dune depends on many things at once. These include the wind, the makeup of the sand, the way it piles into mounds, and the plants. Human activity matters too, such as tourism, traffic, farming and forestry. That is why the area is officially protected as a heritage site.

Seen from high up, the sunlight casts faint shadows and rippling lines across the wide spread of sand. It is a view that makes people come back, even after they have seen it once.