Day 62

Phong Nha

We decided we would take today easy and get a feel for the place as all of the cave tours were quite expensive and we weren't really sure what we wanted to see and if we even needed a cave tour to do it. So after a nice simple breakfast we headed rented a couple scooters and headed out. Whenever you rented a scooter it was always a gamble on how good the scooter would be. Sometimes they're pristine - which honestly is a bit worrying as you know they'll charge your ass for any little scratch. But usually somethings wrong with it. In this case, my bike had no working speedo which actually doesn't make all that difference especially when you're out of a city as there is no speed limit and if there was I certainly wasn't gonna reach it. Alfie's and Daisy's bike ended up without any working lights or fuel meter which I would say is are both fairly important. But, between the 2 of us we just about had a working bike.

There's a little loop that goes around some of the local sites so we thought that we would go round and stop where we wanted. Our first stop was the duck stop. It's kind of hard to describe what the duck stop is but there is ALOT of ducks. When we arrived we got given some sandals to change into then our group is taken into a pen with more ducks than you can count. We stood in line whilst we had food thrown at our feet then the ducks would waddle over and peck the food from our feet which was such a weird sensation as you expect then to bite but they don't. Then we all had a go waddling around with the ducks with an army of loyal waddlers right behind. Then was the finale which was really weird. We sat on a bench and put our feet together and the handler dropped food inbetween our feet and on our lap so we had a bunch of beaks pekking around. Again, my mind told me it would hurt but in all honestly it was a very odd tickling sensation as they nibbled the soles of your feet. All I can say is that no one could stop themselves from laughing.

After that, we had signed up to see Donald Trump... the buffalo. He used to be used for hard labour in the fields and now lived a peaceful life. However, he didn't have alot of room to wander freely and the person offered for us to ride him. We declined as we weren't really sure how ethical it was and decided to pet him instead. Included in our entry ticket was also food, where we were given egg pancakes and vegetables to wrap in rice paper. Overall it was super nice and I wish there were more of it.

Our next stop was a nature reserve but when we got there it was clear that I had been shut for a while and no one was there so we decided against exploring and on to the next stop which was the Botanic Garden. The Botanic Garden wasn't really much of a Garden as you might expect by the name but it was still a nice walk through the jungle. A couple of spots we stopped at were the swimming hole (very mundane), the waterfall (pretty but the swimming was still quite mundane) and the viewpoint (good but the trees covered most of the view). By the end we were pretty hungry so we stopped at the restaurant outside and enjoyed some surprisingly cheap yummy food and drink. They had this winter melon flavoured tea which tasted exactly like you had left a Nice biscuit in a cup of tea too long. It was very odd but kind of nice at the same time.

We didn't have too much time to stop anywhere else after that so we decided just to ride the rest of the loop and head back before it got dark as riding in the dark without working headlights seemed to be quite high on the list of Darwin Awards. It was very nice driving through the valleys, past the rivers, and under the cliffs - rivalling the Hai Van Pass we had done a few days earlier.

We had signed up for the family dinner so we chilled for a while before realising that there was neither family nor dinner waiting for us. A little bit confused we ended up having to go to the other building a few minutes away which we never knew existed where a much more bustling hostel laid. We were chucked at the end of the table and served some lovely food. After some good grub and an interesting chat with a Dutch man where it was revealed everything I knew about eating and drinking were wrong. We wandered to the shop for some snacks before heading back and chilling before hitting the hay.Read more