We arrived in Dong Hoi at 10:30pm, it was an interesting journey to say the least, the kids were hyper then they'd crash, then hyped up again and then they'd crash, basically repeating the process until we departed the train, we certainly now know how our parents must have felt when neither of us could bare the squealing kids anymore haha.

We grabbed a taxi to the hostel and luckily it wasn't too far. Checked in, showered, went down for a drink but they'd closed so headed to bed with a beer.

After a pretty awesome sleep we had a chill out morning before some breakfast. Here we offer some more advice, it is very rare in Vietnam to get meals together, for example Andrews breakfast was finished, and ten minutes later Katie gets hers. This is common in nearly all restaurants so far. We decided that we'd get the public bus to Phong Nha as it was only a couple of dollars rather than a hotel transfer or a taxi for $25! The buses are roughly every hour so we flagged it down sometime after 1pm and took the bumpy ride to Phong Nha Farmstay. As we travelled down the roads it's then that we realise the hotel still had our passports, oh dear! A risky move bit we decided to keep going and hope that the next hotel would be fine with just using our driving licenses for checking-in ID as we were heading back to Dong Hoi in two days time. It was fine so after an hours bus journey and ten minute walk through the rice paddies we arrived. With a welcome beer we were ready to relax for a couple of days. Relaxing turned out to be riding a very old clapped out bicycle to "The Pub with Cold Beer" supposedly a 5km ride (very much doubt that number after several detours haha) it was an interesting ride to say the least, ridiculously hot but we made it and grabbed some cold beers and played some pool. The menu stated you could catch your own chicken for dinner haha, not quite the case but Andrew decided to give it a shot. Catching dinner consisted of a small bolshy 7 year old girl dragging us to the back of the building to a chicken coop. From there she asked Andrew to hold the door closed once she was in. With a harsh scream at the chickens and lots of flapping and clucking out she came holding a chicken by the legs and swinging it around as if it was a skipping rope, she then stuck it on the scales, weighed and checked it was fine, then got it ready for Andrew to chop, Katie excused herself at this point! After half an hour we had a full barbecued chicken with rice and fresh spinach. The sun had set so we decided to head back before dark, mission failed as we got slightly lost again! We tried asking for a directions by which point it was pitch black, and after being told we were miles away we stopped along the road and we were right next to the turn off! Nothing left to do but a splash in the pool, listening to some terrible live music and then bed.

The following day we had booked to do the Phong Nha National Park Tour, after a breakfast we jumped on the bus where we found the we were amongst 27 others on the tour. Felt slightly out of place surrounded by young backpackers but went along with it, the first few stops were through the park to show signs of bomb scarring from the war, the 8 ladies memorial cave before the first big stop being Paradise Cave. To get there was very Jurassic park like on buggies whizzing through the park before a steep climb to the cave entrance. The cave was out of this world, enormous and beautiful, absolutely teaming with tourists but we were prepared for this after reading reviews. We walked all the way to the end and back admiring the limestone features, stalag mites and stalag tights, and the sheer scale of the cave, plus it was a lot cooler in the cave which certainly helped as the temp was 38 in the park.

Once everyone was accounted for we grabbed lunch at Paradise Cave restaurant, serving Tofu in Vietnamese sweet and sour sauce, pork and capsicum, spring rolls, rice, omelette, fried spinach and garlic, overall a lovely feast. Then it was time for adventure to begin. A short ride to dark cave, with it being the weekend it was ridiculously busy so we were taken down to the river to relax whilst waiting. Unfortunately we were spectators to a not particularly nice event when one of the girls ziplined into an obstacle cargo net, where she completely split open the front of her leg, so a rescue mission took place ridiculous to watch as it consisted of a speedboat and a bamboo ladder, but they got her down and she was whisked to hospital, everyone was getting pretty fed up of waiting but finally we were called, harnessed in and ready to go, Katie convincing herself to do the ziplined to the cave and Andrew took the kayak. Once there we walked and swam to access mud cave, there really are not many words to explain mud cave, the pictures are
enough, it was just a truly amazing experience to genuinely float in mud! After a kayak back down the river, it was time to de-mud and drink beer! Due to the excitement of free beer we did however forget a backpack (not doing well, first the passports now the bag) with a tipsy journey back to the hotel and then the realisation of a missing bag the hotel contacted the cave to keep it safe for us. Our guide and the staff however pretty much warned us that they'd be surprised if the money would still be in there. Rather than let it bring us down we showered and then sat outside watching the sunset and shared a pizza and had a few drinks with our guide, whilst he helped us with our plan to get the bag back. Tired eyes arrived so we hit the sack.

Today's mission involved catching a lift to another hostel to hire a scooter and we then headed into the national park to retrieve the bag! Was a pretty awesome day considering and was great to share a scooter and see the park close up. The bag was there and whilst being filmed on a mobile phone by one member of staff and interrogated by two others checking everything that should be in my bag I was allowed it once I and proved it was mine, fair play to them and nothing had been taken. We tootled back to return the scooters, grabbed a bite to eat before getting the local bus again back to Dong Hoi to collect our passports and board the train for the dreaded 11 hour journey on a chair. We met another English couple at the station so we all decided to try and locate the so called catering carriage to grab a drink, with lots of stares from the locals onboard, a lengthy walk down the entire train we discovered what appeared to be more like the staff area haha but with some funny looks and a beer request we were given a table and drank until the told us they had to sleep so a little tipsy we all had the marathon obstacle course back down the train, stepping over bodies, boxes and allsorts. Passing through a crazy lightening storm and not the greatest sleep, we arrived in Ninh Binh at 5am. As we write this entry it's been a hard morning, having to wait till 8am to check into our hotel, we slept for a few hours, we're both feeling pretty sick and run down so have opted to basically lie around all day not doing much haha we have however booked a tour to explore Ninh Binh tomorrow.