Off the wonderful sleeper train where dad got locked out of his sleeper at 0500 so watched the world go by…….40 min by bus from Dong Hoi train station to Phong Nha Farmstay….a pretty cool oasis….
Beautiful views, with lovely, friendly staff.
A bike ride to Pepper House…lunch and a swim…
He really is having a great holiday!!!
Day trip to a temple, memorial cave, Paradise and Dark caves…wow grandma has her britches out again waving them about….
The temple has been built in rememberence of what happened in a small cave and as a symbol of what lots of Vietnamese endured through the war.
8 people took refuge in the cave during a bombing raid, when artillery caused the mouth of the cave to collapse and a huge slab of rock (that a tank could not move!) remained insitu for over 8 days after which time those inside perished of starvation.
Paradise Cave…a 25 min walk up a hill in the heat and humidity to go under ground into the cool of the cave….stalactites and stalagmites on an epic scale…we only did 1km of the 34.2km!
Absolutely staggering.
Dark Cave…photos on the water proof…400mtr zip line to a landing..jump in the water and swim to the entrance. Luke, Abby and I missed out on the zip lining…they were a little too light and I was not!
Once in the cave it was a few hundred mtr walk/crawl/slide/ climb to the mud pool which was like a chocolate bath but cold…yet it’s consistency made you +++ buoyant….very cool experience…still getting mud out of our gear!!
We then played on a smaller zipline with water bikes and a pontoon…great lots of fun. We had another family of 5, a single German and 2 Swedes with us and our tour operator (Victor) pulled out 2btl of rum…needless to say the bus was a little louder on the way back to the Farmstay. Victors history lesson was quite touching…on the train again tomorrow morning to Hue.