Vietnam: Day 5

Day 5:

4 am rolled around and we were in Dong Hoi! I can't remember if they woke us up or how we managed to wake up in time (because they weren't making any announcements) but we happened to wake up when the bus was unloading in Dong Hoi. We disembarked with about 4 other guys, got our bags, and the bus drove away. 

It was still dark out, we were on a small street, and the town was dead save a few cabbies offering us rides. We got the feeling we were in the middle of nowhere. In talking with the other people from the bus we learned we were all headed for the famous caves of Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park. One of the guys was talking with a cabbie and had haggled out a price for a ride all the way out to the caves, 70 kilometers away.

Did we want to go with them and split the cab fare 6 ways?

But what about Raphael? Should we take the chance of meeting him at the train station? Would he really be there? Where was the train station?

Raphael had been pretty cool so what the heck, let's take the chance! We decided to stay and wait to see if Raphael would show up at the train station. Raphael's train wasn't due in until 6 so we had some time to kill. 

First things first, find the train station. We did not have a map and there were no hotels in sight so we decided the best way to find it was to take a cab. We hailed one in passing and were able to easily find the train station.

There was not much to it; you couldn't even compare it to a Japanese train station. There would not be a problem of finding Raphael when he train arrived. There was only 2 platforms serviced by the same 1 gate and only one waiting area. Trains came in one at a time and only about one per hour.

We passed the next few hours just hanging around the train station. At one point, I went to use the toilet and what did I pass on the way there? 

A random monkey in a cage...

And some chickens in a basket.

 This is how modern the train station was.

The 6AM train came in, albeit a little behind schedule, and who was on it? Our French friend, Raphael! Hooray! It really worked!

Upon leaving the train station, we were immediately swamped with offers for cab rides but at outrageous prices. What were we to do when overwhelmed with offers?

Eat some breakfast. How about some more pho!

After breakfast we listened to the cabbies' offers a little more closely and haggled some. Raphael drove a hard bargain though and none of the offers where low enough. That was fine, we would go find a bus station. We had been told Dong Hoi was the gateway to the caves so there had to be some buses that ran regularly between the two places.

We got some directions from a local and made our way to the bus station. It was only just across the train tracks so we set off.

 Walked passed a market on the way. 

We were definitely getting into the less touristic part of this town and this country.

There were a lot of buses and not a lot of people at the bus station. The posted schedule was in Vietnamese so Nick went up to the counter to ask when the next bus left. This caused quite a stir and basically every person at the bus station came to help him figure it out.

The bus didn't leave until 2pm (and it was still only 7am, remember) so we nixed that idea. A cab ride it would be. Some more haggling later and we made an agreement. The cab driver would take us the 70 km to the cave, wait for us as we walked the cave, and then take us the 70 km back to Dong Hoi all for 1 million dong- that's just 50 USD! Plus we were splitting the fare with Raphael. Not bad! As we left Dong Hoi you could tell our driver was thinking "What the heck did I just get myself into??"

Our tour of the Vietnamese country side on our way to the cave:

Phong Nha-ke Bang National Park has several different large caves of interest. Most people go to see the cave whose entrance is by boat only. We however, went to see the "Paradise Cave" which was only discovered in 2011 and is the longest cave in the world!

Before we got into the cave, we needed some coffee. We were in luck because there was a little shop before the entrance. Upon ordering coffee, we were presented with this:

 It was an extremely slow-brewing single serving of coffee. After about 5 minutes, it only produced about 2 oz of coffee. We were offered ice with it but we had been warned about how unsanitary the ice could be so we declined. In the end, we essentially had just a shot of espresso- except, for some unexplained reason,  it was quite sweet.

 I'm in a tank top and our barista had on a North Face jacket.

Then, we finally entered the cave!

 It was amazingly beautiful inside! So many colors! So humongous!

 It honestly felt like we were walking on Mars!

 It also, for some reason, reminded me of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

 Amazing!  

Back outside the cave, this Vietnamese woman wanted her photograph with Nick. Just Nick.

 And then the way back to Dong Hoi...

We were really glad we weren't trying to find this on our own because the road was quite hidden. See where those bikers are? That's the entrance to the back road that takes you up to the caves.

We got back to Dong Hoi and it was still only noon. We bought tickets for the next train to Hue, which didn't leave until 3:30 so we had more time to kill in this teeny little town.

We got some lunch at this very small establishment. The main room of the restaurant also appeared to double as the family's bedroom (see the bed there?) and their personal kitchen. We tried to order some grilled pork sandwiches by pointing to the sign but were instead served more pho-type soup. Who knows what it actually was... Mine even included some special black 'sponge'...yes. It looked kind of like it may have been tofu but then it was an unnatural black and was very rubbery when I poked at it. Raphael made the joke that it was a sponge missing from the kitchen and then I couldn't even try it. Neither Raphael or Nick's soup came with the special black square...

It was pretty hot by now and we had reached the point where all 3 of us could tell we hadn't slept well the night before. (Raphael could tell because he was having a hard time thinking of English words. I could tell because everything just seemed so funny.) We still had over an hour though so we decided to walk back to the market we had walked passed earlier that morning.

 We were really getting out of the touristic area now.

When we got to the market, this woman got really, really excited that we were there and began gesturing really excitedly toward some machine she had and a pile of husks of some sort. She just kept exclaiming the same thing over and over in Vietnamese trying to convey what her machine did.

 We had no idea what she was saying so we just started repeating what she said to us. It was total confusion.

 Then Raphael saw some coconuts and we ordered 3.

 After we drank all the juice out of the middle, she came back and split open the coconuts so we could eat the fruit in the middle. Yum!

 After our refreshing treat, we explored the rest of the market.

 Just some raw, unrefrigerated meat for sale. How long has this been sitting in the sun is anyone's guess.

 Some live baby geese for sale. 

Something tells me they won't be alive for much longer after they are purchased...

The walk back to the train station.

 It was a 3.5 train ride to Hue and we just wanted to get there for as cheap as possible. Turns out the cheap seats on the Vietnamese train were literally wooden-slate benches.

 The train was really full and we were the only foreigners to be seen. So, for a while, we played with some (giant) Vietnamese baby! He loved Raphael- it was adorable!

4 hours later and a very sore bum later, we arrived in Hue! Raphael had a recommendation for a hotel so we took another cab to the hotel.

After we checked-in and dropped off our bags, we set out to find dinner. One of the locals on the street told us about some market that was a few miles up the street. We were figuring it would be a market like the one in Dong Hoi- sounded good!

The first available form of transportation was these cyclo-drivers (like a tuk-tuk, or a bike propelled wagon).

As it turned out, this "market" was actually a 3 story mall with a food court on the top floor. What a site we must have been, 3 foreigners rolling up to the mall in cyclos to go eat some Vietnamese fast food.

 The food court was pretty deserted except for some karaoke singers.

 We ordered our food (essentially Vietnamese fast food) and had a seat.

 We were really the only ones eating but it was almost 10 pm.

We finished our food and then made for the elevator. As we waited for the elevator, food court staff came out of the woodwork, turning off lights and shutting the place down for the night. We didn't know it was nearly closing time!

We all packed into the last elevator going down for the night,

 It really struck my funny bone and I couldn't help but laugh  xP

It had been a long, busy day and we were exhausted. We headed back for the hotel. It was bedtime.