Mui Ne

We arrived in Mui Ne yesterday afternoon (Mar. 2). It's really beautiful here. Not too touristy yet. There is hardly anyone here. We are staying in a little resort and we are the only people there. It's so strange. Only $12 a night! It feels like the staff is working just for us. We feel bad that they are serving only us.

Today we were sitting by the water and out of nowhere 3 small children were standing in front of us. We had just ordered two cokes and they pointed at the cans. We guessed that they wanted our cokes but later I saw that they were carrying a bag of plastics and things they were collecting. When we gave them the cans they didn't know how to open them. We opened them and they stayed with us sharing them with each other. The oldest girl was very nervous about the staff of the hotel telling them to go away so she kept watching to see if they were coming. We were trying to tell her it was OK. The other two didn't seem to care much but the older one would pull them away when she thought someone was coming. They ended up going down the water away from us but kept looking over to us waving and blowing kisses so we got our things and went down to join them.
They were putting their hands on their stomachs asking for something to eat. We have decided that it is not right to hand money to children. Since we can't give to all of the children we see. We have decided that when we can we will at least help them eat.

Jose ran to a store while I sat with them. He came back with around 10 pounds of bananas, cookies and peanuts. We also gave them three little elephant purses that we had bought to bring home as gifts. They were so happy. They were holding the purses up to their faces smelling them and saying thank you with big smiles. We sat and had a banana with them and then, we guess as a thank you, they started dancing around.

We think they were around 8, 7 & 6 years old. Hard to tell because they were so tiny, they may have been younger.
They probably spend every day on their own helping their family by looking for plastic and they were the happiest kindest children we have ever seen.