SE Asia

We seemed to have picked our first dud accommodation. The room is not the nicest, but the killer is the beds are absolutely rock solid, so neither of us got the best night sleep. It's on £15 a night, so we decided to move a day earlier to a new accommodation for the sake of our backs.
The new place was only 10 minutes down the road, but it was a long 10 minutes there with heavy rucksacks on our backs and bags balancing in front baskets on our bikes. But we made it!
Checked into our new place, we cycled 20 minutes to the basepoint of a famous viewpoint. We started the climb before 9, but that evidently wasn't early enough as it was already over 30° by then! The ascent was only 500 steps but was an absolute killer, some of these steps were deep, and I needed lots of rest stops to make it all the way up. I don't think I've ever been so sweaty.
The view at the top was worth it though! One side you could see the mountain path of the smaller viewpoint with a lotus pond garden and rice fields in the background. The other side was lush green mountains intersected by a valley and river with tiny boats meandering down. The very top had 20m long concrete dragon you had to scrabble up to, and you could make your way along by clinging on to his spines and hopping over rocks. Making your way along the dragon wasn't a very popular path (it was a little sketchy) so when I reached his tail, I had the whole viewpoint to myself!
In need of some sort of energy, we climbed back down and bought some coconuts at a cafe at the base, before exploring two very underwhelming caves which the viewpoint is named after! (Mua caves). More excitingly, there was a very beautiful lotus field with bridges and platforms across which was more fun to look round, even though the lotus weren't in bloom, the field (more of a pond) was still gorgeous.
We dropped our trusty bikes back at the rental, before grabbing lunch and checking in properly to our new (much nicer) accommodation. Once lying down in aircon, it's vert hard to muster up the energy to go out into the wall of heat waiting outside. But we did! (after a little nap). This time with even creakier pedal bikes, courtesy of the hostel, we ventured to another coffee spot in the middle of nowhere, and had the whole place to our selves!
There were lots of birds in this area, so Kath watched some sort of cranes circle the rice fields while I sat and wrote on this app haha. Cycling here we spotted what we now know is a coucal or crow pheasant. It flew right in front of us carrying a fish. It's got the body of a large crow but with chocolate brown wings, a long black tail and red eyes, quite a cool bird.
After bird watching and trying to locate where a particular dog was barking from (the nose was echoing across the whole valley) we headed back before it went dark. Spotted another kingfisher, this time happily sat on a wire. He was pretty close but I still failed to get a decent photo.
Later on, we found a place that did local craft beer and cider which we were both very happy about. My beer was by Pasteur street, which is a brewery based in Ho Chin Min. I tried a passion fruit wheat beer and Jasmine IPA, both were very delicious. After great drinks we then had very disappointing food. So disappointing, it didn't even get a feature on my 20 photo selection of the day. We went to a vegetarian place that did Vietnamese and western food, and on a whim I decided to get a pizza... It was not a good pizza. Serves me right for ordering western food!Read more