Last night we found a great little cafe in Hue from trip advisors finest recommendations, and now that we have worked out how to download maps from Google maps offline it’s making life much easier! The meal was great, really chilled and lots of fab food. The local beer is actually really nice and costs 30pence a bottle!!!
We headed back to the hostel stopping for one last drink on the way back, we found a brief with live guitarists who were out of this world! They had put a makeshift stage on the pavement corner, they seem to use the pavements for nothing but walking on!
Back at the hostel the smell of damp hit us again from our room.When we opened the door, there was intermittent water pouring from the bathroom ceiling and given the smell it had been going on for some time! We asked reception if we could move rooms but it was lost in translation. We showed the receptionist the problem who informed us there were no free rooms. We resigned to dealing with it for the short stop over.
10 minutes later, as David stepped into the shower there was a knock on the door. As David panicked, I opened the door and we were told we could move to the managers room for the night as he wasn’t staying. Never did I think we would complain about a room that cost us £8 , but it did the trick!
Our pick up was on time for the transfer to Phong Nha, roughly 4 hours, the bus w basic and pretty cramped. We made one stop, at some place that Mary had supposedly been seen. It was quite strange, they had religious music blasting from speakers on top of the buildings and marble Mary statues everywhere. We got a fried egg baguette and got back on the bus.
Phong Nha is just one long Street with hundreds of hostels and tour booking places. It’s set in the middle of the jungle with huge limestone sheer cliffs around. Once again when we arrived it was peeing it down, we jumped into the closest bar for some cover to sort out our stuff. David nipped nextdoor to find some directions, he was gone ages! He managed to get a map downloaded and we weren’t far from the hostel so we just walked rather than call for a lift.
Again nice hostel, good hosts, clean spacious room. The receptionist who I think is also the daughter sat and spoke to us about the tours available and advised we did the Phong Nha cave today as it was very local and we only had a half day.
After a quick power nap from me, we took the bikes and tried to find where we were to get the boat to Phong Nha cave. We cycled a bit too far on the one road and had to turn back and ask for directions. We found the place and paid to park our bicycles. At the ticket office we were told no point in going on because you had to pay per boat for up to 12 people and there was no one else, we opted to come back at a busier time to try again in the next few days. Instead we walked along the main Street and had a smoothie before cycling back.
Again it’s very wet here and all of our things feel quite damp, I’m finding it difficult to warm up because as soon as you step outside your soggy and nothing dries with the humidity in the air. I went for a shower and the first minute or two were so warm but that was it…. A cold shower after that. Really regretted washing my hair there is no hairdryer here, it’s the first thing I look for each time we go to a new room. I was laying in bed after my cold shower trying to warm up and suddenly this massive dragonfly like insect flew from the bathroom into the room, it was huge and you could see the sting on its tail, it was hilarious trying to get it out of the room with just a towel and trying not to aggravate nor kill it, we must have been wafting it towards the door for around 20minutes and even when we got it out of the door it just sat on the floor outside the room. I was convinced it was going to be there when we left but it wasn’t. I guess we are in the jungle!!!
We ate dinner at the hostel and it was great! An absolute feast! We ate with a group from italy and Norway, they were planning to head to easytiger the party hostel afterwards but didn’t go in the end. We sat and had a few beers and played cards. There was a lot of cheering and fireworks as we were playing and it turned out the Asin cup was on and they really like their football. The game went through extra time to penalties so we sat with the family to watch the penalities, when Vietnam won the street went crazy including fireworks, the dogs howling along to the celebrations too. That was the celebration with them only through to the quarter finals!!!
We are going on the national park trip with a 730am pick up tomorrow so we went to bed and watched a film….. 10minutes in I was fast asleep as usual!
South East Asia 2019 