The 220-kilometre ribbon of Highway 1A connecting Ho Chi Minh City to Mui Ne was completed in segments between 1975 and 1992, replacing the colonial Route Coloniale 1 that once carried French convoys along the Indochinese coast. Today the corridor carries a steady stream of limousine coaches — nine-seat mini-vans upholstered in leather, some with lie-flat sleeper berths — ferrying beachgoers, kitesurfers and sand-dune photographers to the fishing village turned resort enclave on the edge of Binh Thuan Province. The journey spans four to four-and-a-half hours depending on traffic through the industrial belt of Binh Duong and Dong Nai provinces, then opens into cashew plantations and dragon-fruit farms as the road climbs toward the coastal plain. Mui Ne became accessible to domestic tourists in the late 1990s after the Phan Thiet bypass reduced travel time from Saigon by nearly an hour. The first limousine operators appeared in 2003, offering reclining seats and air-conditioning as an alternative to the government-run inter-provincial buses that stopped at every market town. By 2010 the route had become one of the most competitive in southern Vietnam, with more than a dozen operators running hourly departures from Ben Thanh, District 1 and Pham Ngu Lao. The term limousine in Vietnamese transport parlance denotes a premium coach service rather than a stretched sedan — vehicles range from eighteen-seat midi-buses to intimate six-seat Mercedes Sprinters with massage seats and individual entertainment screens. The coastal road enters Mui Ne from the west, skirting the red and white dunes that have made the area a fixture on South-East Asian travel circuits since the early 2000s. Most operators drop passengers at hotels along Nguyen Dinh Chieu, the ten-kilometre beachfront strip where Russian signage competes with Vietnamese and English. Morning departures from Ho Chi Minh City arrive in time for late lunch; overnight sleeper services leave after dark and reach Mui Ne by dawn, delivering passengers directly to guesthouse doors as fishing boats return with the night's catch. The route has remained the primary overland link between the capital and the Binh Thuan coast for two decades, outlasting several attempts to establish helicopter and seaplane services that never moved beyond trial runs.