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11 July: Dong Hoi

We were up early again, its becoming a pattern! We headed down for breakfast meeting John at a street stall table, 20 meters from our hotel. He had been up since 05h00 and had taken an early morning swim with the rest of the Vietnamese locals who also gathered there. Breakfast would be a bowl of noodle soup with beef. We finished our meal and headed back to the guest house to meet our taxi driver there. He could speak no English, so upon greeting us he promptly phoned the agent, who spoke to me and informed me that this was the taxi driver who would take us to Phong Nha and Tien Son caves. We hopped in the reasonably new Toyota Corolla and headed for the caves only 55 km away. We arrived there just after 8h30, but it took us another 45 minutes to get tickets and to wait for 6 others who could fill a boat of 10 people. In the end we found 2 Europeans, who would join us, we thus chartered the boat for the six of us and were off.

The boat trip took us up the river to the caves, past limestone outcrops, villages and children and water buffalo wallowing in the river shallows. All in all the 4 km boat ride took us just under 45 minutes and we arrived at a disembarkation point, where we started on the Tien Son cave. The climb up the hundred or so steep steps was an ordeal in itself with the blistering heat but the views of the rice paddies from the top was worth it!

The cave was used in the 9th and 10th century as a Hindu sanctuary and is still highly regarded and visited, it would explain the stampede of tourists who entered the cave with us. The caves were later used in the Vietnam/American war as a hospital and ammunitions depot, as well as being one of the entrances to the Vietcong tunnels. The caves much resemble the Cango caves although the tourists there are better behaved and don't get away climbing on stalagmites and hitting stalactites. All together we saw only 2 other westerners during the rest of the day, with thousands of Vietnamese and other Asian tourists. The caves were quite a site and the formations themselves were brightly lit up with different florescent coloured lights.

From here we walked down the steps and regrouped below, before trying to spot our boat, with about a hundred waiting for a thousand tourists, its not so easy a task. In the end the only thing we could tell the announcer who called the boats to come forward and collect their group, was that we were the only group of western tourists on a boat. After that it didn't take long for him to find the boat, although Barbara also remembered the boat number just as he called it out. Back on the boat, we started into the cave, only to become one of many boats lining up and edging forward. When we came to the small opening where the groups disembarked, it was total chaos. Boats everywhere were trying to get their passengers ashore and there were no shortage of them. We ended up climbing over two boats, before we made shore.

The Phong Nha caves are approximately 400 million years old, making them the oldest caves in all of Asia, also the largest and most beautiful in Vietnam. The caves are in excess of 35 km long and the name, Phong Nha, means teeth. It used to be known as the dragons teeth, but the stalagtites have since been removed. We continued through the caves for another hour, before returning to our boat and having to navigate a way out of the caves. Another stop at a small section of the cave right at the entrance, before returning back to the office where our taxi driver had been waiting for the past 4 hours.

We greeted our two European companions before getting into the car and heading back to Dong Hoi, another hour's drive. Back in the city the driver dropped us off at the main bridge, from here Leanne and I headed for the market, while J & B went looking for lunch. We still needed some supplies for the train trip tomorrow and the only place we would find them was the market, we also wanted to find some cheap food and the market was always good for that. We walked 2.5 km to the market and were disappointed with what we found. Most of the places sold fish, fair enough it is a fishing village, but the fruit was limited and overpriced, so was the water and there were limited other food stuffs to choose from. In the end we only purchased another brittle pancake with peanuts and honey and a packet of oreo cookies. This would have to hold us on the 9 hour train journey - I doubt it.

We walked around looking for a place to eat, only after looking for 15 minutes did we find one. Of course they didn't speak English, our Vietnamese that we had memorized not helping us much. I motioned to go to his kitchen, where I pointed at some of the food and tasted others. Once we had decided what we wanted in it we still needed to formalize the price. He wanted 20 000 and I wanted 10 000, so in all fairness we settled on 15 000 for a dish. All this time Leanne was kept busy by a toddler splashing around in a plastic basin in the kitchen. The food came, rice, bean sprouts, spinach, beef and fried bits of pig fat, which Leanne avoided and I ate. It was actually very nice, but we decided to only purchase one and look elsewhere for another dish, this never realized.

On the way back we met a vietnamese couple sitting on the rivers edge, they greeted us as we walked past, our natural reaction to greet them and keep on walking, but we decided to sit down and chat at their request. We soon found out that the man was an "Easy Rider", they take travelers on motorbikes all through Vietnam for anything from a day to a month at a time. We were able to get some very helpful information regarding our travel plans and modes of transport further north. From here we headed back to our room where we relaxed for an hour or so in the cool of the aircon, before John invited us to join them for a beer and dinner.

We met up with them later at one of the side restaurants and ordered some beer while chatting about arbitrary events and ideas, later heading off for a dinner of seafood rice. The evening was growing late and we settled in hoping to get a good nights rest and be up early to enjoy the waves without the suns burn.