I am writing this post along with the previous post which talked about our trip up north from Dong Hoi, a small town a few hundred miles south of Hanoi, sitting on a reclining chair looking out into the pacific ocean. A great man who works at the place we are staying at just delivered me a hot Vietnamese coffee, and I am surrounded by soft sand. It is really starting to feel like a vacation…
After our spectacular loop up north in the Ha Giang province we took an evening bus to Hanoi, which delivered us early in the morning. Not wanting to have to spend a day passing time in Hanoi we took a taxi to the train station, with the goal of booking the earliest train we could find south.
We got to the train station at about 4:00am, having been driven there by an unexpectedly slow and cautious and rule abiding taxi driver, and saw that they had a 6:00am train. Perfect! We wanted to go to Dong Hoi, the town I am currently in, which is near some of the biggest caves in the world, so we asked the woman behind the ticket counter for tickets. We asked for a 4 person cabin with beds for the 10 hour journey, and got our tickets. After a few minutes when we were about to find our train we discovered that we had paid to go to Hue, which wasn’t where we wanted to go, and was much more expensive than a ticket to Dong Hoi. We asked the people at the ticket counter for a different ticket, and then spent about an hour and a half waiting for them to figure out how to fix the problem. Luckily we got refunded and ended up with the correct tickets. Although the tickets to Hue would have gotten us to the right place, we were able to save about $10 each fixing the issue, and $10 will fund the better part of a day here.
The train was amazing. We got a cabin to ourselves, along with an outlet and beds and a table, and spent the bulk of the day relaxing and looking at photos and sleeping. Although the day was uneventful we had a great time relaxing on the train.
We arrived in Dong Hoi at about 4:30pm, not knowing what to expect from the town. I found a hostel on the beach that had good reviews online, so we got a taxi there and booked a private room. It ended up being a little more expensive than most places we have stayed at (more expensive being about $2.50 more than usual per person for the night) but it has been an amazing place. We have a great room, a huge empty beach, relaxing chairs on the sand, and great service. If anyone is in Dong Hoi, try staying at the Beachside Backpackers Hostel.
Today we woke up, thinking it was about 5:00 am due to the darkness in our room, only to figure out that it was 9, and our room just happened to be very dark. We woke up quickly, rented motorbikes from the hostel, and headed out to the Phong Nha Ke Bang national park with a Portuguese guy on vacation who asked to join us. We rode about 45 minutes on the Ho Chi Minh Highway out to the park, and headed to Paradise Cave, which is one of the largest natural caves in the world. The cave was spectacular to say the least. It was bigger than one can imagine, and full of remarkably impressive structures and minerals.
After Paradise cave we headed to Dark Cave, which we had been told to visit if we wanted to see two caves in a day. The cave itself at Dark Cave was very cool, mainly because it was full of a heavy clay that mixed with water into pools. We went in wearing swimming gear, and swam through the mud, which was really crazy. Because the mud was so dense we floated with more buoyancy than we had ever felt. When we sat in the water our chests, heads, and legs wouldn’t go under. I didn’t try swimming under the muddy water, but I assume it would have been nearly impossible. It felt as if we were wearing life jackets.
The Cave was interesting and cool, but what was even more interesting was everything surrounding it. We paid a lot for the cave tour (which you had to pay to enter the cave) but never really knew what we were supposed to do while there. We were supposed to give someone our tickets and watch a safety video, but never found out where to do that. We were supposed to get a guide but instead we ended up with another tour, which didn’t seem to have anyone in charge. The cave was cool but it wasn’t the main attraction. To get to the cave we took a zipline over a river, which was fine for Bryden and I but for the heavier people in our group ended with them crashing into some sand at the end. There was a ropes course after the cave that we had to enter by letting go of a zipline, which dropped us painfully into a rope net. We didn’t have a bad time at all, the whole experience was quite entertaining and fun, but it was all a little strange.
You can expect more info on the caves from Bryden soon.
After the Dark Cave we headed back to the hostel, getting dinner with the very nice Portuguese guy on the way back, and since then we have been relaxing. It is very nice to have time to sit down and not have to do anything other than look over the ocean and relax on the beach.
We are spending tonight in the same room, and don’t have any plans for tomorrow. We have booked a hotel for a few nights in Hoi An, and we have to be there in 2 nights, but before that we have no plans. In two days we will try and motorbike over the Hai Van pass, which is a quiet pass that crosses the border of northern and southern Vietnam, but we don’t know what to do tomorrow. We will either go to Hue or further south to Danang, so expect an update on what we decide tomorrow. If anyone has any ideas for what we should do, let us know in the comments below.
The relaxation is starting, but there will still be plenty of adventure.