A mindblowing few days in Phong Na Khe Bang National Park and Dong Hoi

It is quite difficult writing this entry as the last few days have just been totally incredible, and if course that means not had time to write blog entries so need to do the whole lot in one hit! We have been in one if Vietnam's newest national parks and based upon the time we had there should be a 'must do' for anyone visiting the country. The authorities need to do a little bit of work on their tourist offering a bit but more on that later...!

Disembarking our night train in Dong Hoi after sleeping surprisingly well we got in a taxi with Anthony, our new Irish friend who enjoys a beer at any given opportunity, and can't blame him around here. Arriving in the small town of Phong Nha we met up with a big group of other fellow travellers and decided to head over to the Phong Nha Cave and to do the boat tour. Noteworthy members of the group consisted of three German uber-giants (and also legends) Tilmann, Nils and Joche, Stephi who we had met at NYE in Cat Ba, a hippy girl and a French-Vietnamese guy (more on these two later), Anthony our new Irish friend an Australian couple who took every opportunity to mention the Ashes!

Phong Nha cave is one of a number if caves in this area which includes the largest cave in the world, so as you can imagine it was massive and absolutely beautiful and incredible. The pictures do it no justice but rest assured it was awesome. It also seems the Hippy girl and the French guy seemed to have some kind if spiritual connection in there as they were very late coming out after the French guy got his ball out, took his shirt off and decided to do some weird kind of dance in the cave. Clearly this worked wonders with the hippy girl, but the Aussies were not too happy as it was dark by the time we got back and they had to cycle home to their homestay in the dark - haha payback!

The rest of the evening was spent with our new German and Irish friends hatching plans for the next day and 'cutting a deal' with this guy Hong who was going to rent us scooters for the next day. We were joined by a Dutch fellow Tristan who is part way through a 2 year odyssey in this part of Asia on his motorbike. Rather embarrassingly we got well and truly ripped off by a 10 year old girl who appeared to be the head waitress in a restaurant entirely staffed by children it would seem! We were told the food was good here but after ordering their banquet meal for six and being presented with half a fish, 5 bowls of tofu and a 'free of charge' bowl of 'morning glory' afraid cannot really comment! After brushing ourselves down from being outdone by a bunch of children we went back to the Jungle Bar to hatch our plan for the next day...

Renting scooters again (seriously the best way to travel around here!) we headed out into the National Park to check out another cave (Paradise Cave, which used to be the largest in the world before they discovered an even bigger one down the road, but that costs £3000 to visit so figured our budgets might not stretch that far!). After a few hours driving around some amazing scenery and visiting the cave we thought it would be fun to drive up the mountain pass towards the Laos border and along the Ho Chi Min Trail. This next few hours will without doubt be on the highlights reel at the end of this trip. If it was all about the scenery then we definitely discovered the 'real' Vietnam here, mountains and jungle as far as the eye can see and the Vietnam countryside that is evocative of the war films. The temptation to just keep driving along this historic route was very tempting but we had to come back eventually - beer with the Irish and Germans was calling!

Deciding that the children's restaurant had enough of our money the previous night we decided to head to a restaurant recommended by the local lass Nils went on an early evening date with (turns out she was married!). We went in and were initially waved out again (seems it is a locals only place). A fabulous sequence of events was about to occur. A well dressed gent then stood up and in excellent English declared we should come and sit down to eat and shouted at the staff accordingly. A little circumspectly we agreed and after discussing a cost for a banquet we settled down and got chatting with this gentleman and his equally well heeled friends. Transpires Chien Bach is some kind of journalist, celebrity businessman and him and his friends pay an annual vigil to the huge cemetery at Hamburger Hill to pay their respects to combatants in the war, domestic and foreign. It was a humbling story and hard not to feel a slight twang of emotion. To top it off he insisted on paying for our entire meal (for 8 of us) and beers, overawed with gratitude we took lots of photos and lots of handshaking. Him and his friends then left in their chauffeured cars back to Hanoi. A true one off experience from a true gentleman and never to be forgotten.

Fired up from this we decided again to hire scooters the next day (but this time from a different place as the lack of brakes, misfiring exhaust pipes, buckled wheels and malfunctioning starter motors made us think maybe the place we hired from the previous day was maybe not that great!). This time we headed down to the coast, taking in some of the towns and villages along the way and just soaking up the scenery and the people. This stretch of coastline is stunning and seemingly undiscovered with mile after mile of white sandy beach (albeit with a scattering of litter in true Vietnamese style). We were greeted with a degree of surprise in some of these villages which are well off the tourist trail. Hungry for some food we did a bit of sign language with some local workmen and fishermen who gesticulated for us to keep driving along the beach, a few more kilometres along and at the very end of the sandy track suddenly an idyllically placed seafood restaurant (well shack!) appeared. Was clear our prescence was unexpected and lots of mild chaos ensued as the staff tried to summon up the courage to come and take our order. We wandered around and looked at what others were eating and did lots of pointing, waving and various impressions of different types of seafood (the human-scale impression of a crab went down well with the locals!). What followed was an impressive array of crab, squid, cockles, amazing huge prawns and all sorts, a real feast and caught that day within 100m of where it was cooked - Rick Stein eat your heart out! Us and the giant Germans then paid (a complete bargain at about £7 each!) and left in the same way we arrived - in a plume of dust, sand and scooter exhaust fumes. Who knows what they thought of us??!!

Many more miles through remote towns and villages and an incredible dirt track along mile after mile of sandy beach followed as well as a guided tour by some intrigued locals of some of the turrets that lined the entire length of this coastline. A quick trip across a decidedly rickety 'ferry' (Till managed to nearly drive his bike in the river much to everyone's amusement!) and a glorious drive back along the Ho Chi Min highway and we were back. Tired but happy!

Wow what an incredible few days, but the end of another mink chapter of our journey and now carrying on southward to Hoi An and Na Trang...crazy to think we have only been here a week..!