Well that was an eventful first Vietnamese train experience. Ended up being flustered into letting this Vietnamese guy 'help' me onto the train and he kindly stole phone. O well, it could have been worse, and luckily I packed a spare phone in my backpack. Just no sim for the moment and had to suffer a 10 hour train journey without being able to make contact with anyone. I did however, eventually arrive in Dong Hoi, where my hostel was waiting with a pick up car to transfer me to Phong Nha.

Spent that day, as you can imagine, reinstalling my new phone and sorting out insurance, as was kinda nice to just have a chilled day. The hostel I'm at called Easy Tiger, is a great choice. Really lively common area and a great outdoors seating area which has a log fire going 24/7.

Yesterday I did a national park tour. It was so much fun, and went with the three English people in my dorm. We did a few stops round the park looking at some stuff and the stunning grounds. Our tour guide Hii, he was so passionate and informative, he made the day a lot of fun. Then it was into cave number one, "Paradise Cave". It's a beautifully big cave, over 30km long, but we only went about 4km in. Then after some lunch we went to "Dark Cave", which unknowing to us was like an adventure cave. We had to zip line across the river and swim to the entrance, and as the name suggests, it's pretty damn dark. Went down a tiny wet ally inside the cave, where the walls were covered in mud and clay. Then we ended up in this massive mud bath, it's one of the strangest things I've ever done. I've never felt consistency like it, and to sit in it just felt weird, but good weird, you just kind of floated. Then we went for a swim in pitch black and headed out of the cave. We spent some time on its little adventure course set up in the river, playing on the zip swing and kayaking before going back to easy tiger.

Next day we were all a bit over caves, so hired out bicycles. Rode past some school kids, when all of a sudden my bike felt weird and I turned around to find a little boy, who couldn't speak a word of English, had jumped on the back of my bike. Carried on riding and when we past his house, he just jumped off. Nothing like doing the school run. Carried on riding through many rice fields and gorgeous scenery, till we reach the bar the hostel had suggested. Had lunch and on the menu was the option to catch, kill and eat your own chicken... I passed. The others went off tubing, while I spent the afternoon in a hammock, listening to Ben Howard, reading and looking at the lovely views of the river. It was nice to take an afternoon to just be still, I've been on the go so much the past two weeks, so I really loved that time.

Back at easy tiger now, waiting for our night bus back to Hanoi. I've decided to get the bus instead of the train haha. Plus the English people from my dorm are all getting it too, so I feel safer about it.

It's been a lovely couple of days here, so glad Josh recommended me to come!

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