Vườn quốc gia Phong Nha – Kẻ Bàng
Now THERE’S a name. For all of you chumps who can’t read Vietnamese *cough* losers *cough*, that reads Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park (duh!). But actually, Vietnamese is hard as heck to learn. I’ve been really trying, but I think I just started saying “thank you” properly in the last couple days, and I’ve been here for almost a month.
Day 26 Cont. (July 3)
We hopped off our bus at some ungodly late hour (I’m being dramatic, but still) because, in typical Vietnamese fashion, transportation never arrives when it says it will; you will either get in at 3am instead of your planned-for 6am, or you will get in at midnight instead of your well-thought-out 9pm. In this case, it was the latter. We had anticipated an 8pm arrival (because that was what the bus company advertised) and were at our accommodation around half past 10, right on (Vietnamese) schedule. We got dropped off about a 20 minute walk from Phong Nha Coco Riverside Homestay, so we decided to use the stroll to shop around for a motorbike rental. It was only 10pm (there’s a phrase I never thought I’d say), so everywhere was pretty much still open (no one sleeps in this country, I swear).
We ultimately got into a bartering war (and by we, I mean me—I LIVE to barter) with this older gentleman. I, of course, conducted the entire negotiation in my basic Vietnamese (so just the numbers really), which he got a kick out of. He originally wanted 150,000VND (about $6), but I was trying to get him down to 130,000VND (that one US dollar matters!). Finally, he points to a rickety thing and goes “you take that bike, 100,000”. Followed by, “return by 7pm”. At this point, we’re both individually thinking ‘we’ll take it!’ and ‘what the heck is wrong with it that he gave us it for 30,000 LESS than we were offering?’
I accept the bike, he asks for no form of identification or insurance that I will return it, and THEN, when informed where we are staying (a HALF MILE from where we are currently), he tells us “not enough petrol”. Sir. Are you telling me this bike is so empty it cannot make it a half mile?! That is UNHEARD of. And everyone in Vietnam rents their bikes on E. I’m convinced when they come back with some gas, the owners just drive their rentals instead of their own bikes until they’re back on E, and then they rent them again. We fork over the cash, and I tell Susie she can start the trek with her bag (sorry Susie!) because the logistics of two people and two big backpacks and two small backpacks on one scooter was too much to navigate for what was only a 10 minute walk at that point.
I then spend almost five minutes convincing this man that he needs to put some petrol in our bike because he can’t rent out a bike that won’t make it a half mile. The nearest official gas station is a 15 minute drive that I will not be undertaking until morning, and I’m not in the mood to buy a liter of petrol from someone’s driveway that I know will be grossly overpriced. (Sometimes, it’s fun. Right then, I wasn’t feeling it.) He proceeds to offer for me to buy petrol off of him. I really get fired up then (keep in mind I love bartering for stuff), and tell him that he has to put it in for free. After some debate about the ethics of motorbike rentals and how they need to actually run to constitute a rental, he finally agrees to give me a little petrol. He pours, I kid you not, from the top of a liter soda bottle to where the conical part meets the cylinder. But hey! I convinced him to give us some free petrol; winners can’t be whiners!
I finally said goodbye to our friend, who I think actually quite liked me in spite of my strong backbone (or because of?) and headed to the hotel. I passed Susie on the way, so I quickly dumped my bags behind a car when I got to the hotel and went back to pick her up for the final couple hundred meters. (Chivalry is somewhat alive and well!)
Day 27 (July 4)
HAPPY FOURTH!!!
With only one day in Phong Nha, I had to slot my run in first thing and make it super short. We had a full day in the park planned, so I didn’t want it to take any time away from that. Breakfast didn’t open until 7am, so I timed my mile (yes, one singular mile) jaunt to be back with enough time to shower, repack, and be sitting downstairs promptly at 7. I left my phone to charge up (because once again, the outlets favor whatever side of the bed I am NOT on) and planned to run with my iPod shuffle, but she was dead, so silence was my friend. (It wasn’t really silent, I was gasping like I’d just been buried alive.) All that is to say that I didn’t take any photos on my run, but it was really pretty!! I ran along the road, which runs along a river, which runs along some small hill-mountains.
Into the Park
After breakfast and check out, we hopped on our (I’d say trusty, but it most definitely was not) little bike and headed to the park. We stopped for petrol (of course) and then headed to our first destination of the day: Paradise Cave. I had read that it devolves into touristic chaos as the day goes on, so I knew I wanted to do it first thing in the morning. Along the way, we wound through some beautiful, snaking roads that offered stunning views of the river.
Paradise Cave
First stop!! It started out angrily (not sure that’s the word I’m looking for, but it will do). For starters, we had to pay for parking, which always gets Susie and me fired up, even though it’s all of 10¢ usually. (It’s the principle of it!!!) And for the first time ever, the parking attendants expected me to know my license plate by heart, so I had to hoof back to the bike to get the plate number (not a big deal, I know, I know). THEN, we get in line for tickets to the cave and are subsequently cut THRICE by guys going straight to the ticket counters from the exit area. Susie is beyond raging by now, so one of us has to stay cool, calm, and collected or else it will be a straight dumpster fire. (It varies who based on the situation.) I assume the role of patient, life is rad, hippie in this case.
We finally get to the front and get our tickets then make our way onto one of the electric airport golf cart things. I was hoping it was going to take us up to the cave, but instead it just eliminated the flat part of the walk and dropped us at the bottom of a never-ending stone ramp that climbed through the jungle. There was also a set of stairs off to the side, but everyone headed to the ramp, so we followed suit. (FYI we probably should’ve taken the stairs, if anyone visits Paradise Cave in the middle of nowhere Vietnam anytime soon.) The ramp went on for what felt like forever. Susie and her jacked little legs from cranking the stair master before coming took off like someone was chasing her, so I was panting trying to keep up. We passed probably 50 Chinese tourists on the way up the ramp until there was no one out in front of us.
Upon reaching the top, there was a blast of cold air from the cave, which felt unreal. I was drenched in sweat (as usual—the theme of Vietnam is “always wet!”). We then realized there were quite a few stairs to go down into the cave (the Vietnamese LOVE stairs), which Susie also ran down, leaving me in her wake. We took our time exploring the cavernous depths; there was a boardwalk that stretched about a kilometer into the 31.4km long cave—one of Asia’s longest dry caves!
The cave was so unbelievably cool and massive!! We were just in absolute awe the entire time, but we knew photos would never quite capture it. These are the ones we did get, with my minimal cave knowledge serving to caption them.
Dark Cave
After Paradise Cave, we backtracked a bit to Dark Cave, whose focus wasn’t so much on the cave itself (although that was wicked cool) as it was on the inflatable waterpark.
To start with, we got strapped into a zipline (supposedly the longest in Vietnam, but I’m not so sure I’m buying it) with zero instruction. Susie of course offered me up to go first, so I launched myself off the tower, spun around a little, and then BAM!
I went flying at full speed, backwards into the stop block on land. There was no braking. No instruction on best landing practices. Just my body coming to a jarring halt that saw my head slamming into the stop block. And of course, with an already budding headache, the guy unstrapping me slammed my head into the block again. Lovely start to the cave exploration. Truly lovely.
I waited for Susie to complete her descent, filming it on my GoPro because I had a feeling she would also come in completely unprepared for the rough ending. (She did indeed.)
Once we were both unstrapped and waiting for the rest of the group, we were told we could get in the water and swim over to the cave entrance (in lifejackets UGH) because I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes on land. We did as they instructed and met up with the rest of the group at the entrance. The rest of the group being a family of four that would shortly drive us (especially Susie) INSANE.
We proceeded into the cave entrance with a guide and were quickly back in the water for a little cave swim (I mean LITTLE—there were maybe 3 yards where we couldn’t touch in the middle). Susie and I crossed the little cave lake in seconds while the family behind us started throwing a fit about how they couldn’t swim. The description of the exploration includes swimming in the cave, so I’m not really sure what they thought they had signed up for. We started to get real impatient with the whole process of the guide trying to get this family across the tiny puddle of a lake and noticed a German couple completing the trek sans guide, so we asked if we could set out on our own. The guide agreed, so we crossed a couple more cave rivers or lakes before climbing up a slope to a hole in the side of the cave. The guide called for us to leave our lifejackets and go through, and we did not need to be told twice… we were gone.
We emerged on the other side of the hole to a muddier area and a T-stop with paths going left and right. We stopped for a minute, not wanting to veer off course, and consulted with the German couple, but they didn’t have any idea either. The guide finally poked her head through the hole and told us to go left. We set off down the narrow passageway, gasping or swearing every other step due to the thin mud coating on the ground causing us to slip. We reached a boulder blocking the path, which I assumed we would go over, but Susie thought it may have been put there on purpose, so we halted once again and waited for the guide to catch up. She told us to hop over and continue.
Finally, we stumbled out of the narrow passageway into a cavern with a giant mud pool in it, which Susie and I immediately waded into and started coating our bodies with mud. I definitely went a little further than everyone else, slapping it on every inch of skin, including my face, but people pay spas good money for mud facials!!!
When the family arrived, the guide suggested we all switch off our headlamps and settle in the complete dark and silence for a couple moments. We all did as requested, except the freaking dad whose phone was emitting light like a beacon. We all kept telling him to turn off his phone, but it took him a solid minute or two to actually complete the act. Then, the second his phone was off and we had a moment of silence in the darkness, he started making noises to try to be funny. We all had to shush him THRICE before he got the message and shut the heck up for two minutes. I actually thought Susie was going to strangle him, and I was going to have to read up on the Vietnamese legal system; it was touch and go there.
Once our lamps were switched back on, Susie and I took off and left everyone else in our dust. We returned to the front area, rinsed off in the cave lakes/rivers, and then exited the cave entirely. We hopped in kayak to return to the inflatable area near the zipline tower. We then spent a couple hours just goofing around on the inflatables, and it took the family almost thirty minutes after we had emerged to finally make their way back to the play area. I was in genuine disbelief that they were just coming back then.
Our afternoon on the inflatables saw Susie and I try to climb up the side of an iceberg and fall several times before realizing there was a ladder on one side, me fail miserably on an aerial obstacle course (and wind up with rope burn), and both of us not make it past the first obstacle on a water obstacle race course. (In my defense, my side had no functional handles, they had all torn!! Susie’s defense is that she was too busy training to hike Fuji to do arm workouts.) A couple offered to bounce us off the big inflatable bag (you know what I’m talking about), but I did not trust my uncoordinated self to land gracefully and unpainfully, and Susie didn’t want to risk injury at the start of our trip (always the sensible one). We had just seen one girl absolutely face plant, and I didn’t really want to repeat her flight path.
The Duck Stop
We wrapped up at Dark Cave with plans to visit the 8 Ladies Cave—where 8 women were trapped due to US bombing and subsequently starved to death—but the clouds appeared to be rolling in, and we didn’t want to face the impending storms from the road. We instead decided to satiate our hunger and head to The Duck Stop, a small restaurant famous for its ducks (that you play with, not eat).
We experienced a duck back and foot massage, which entails the duck wrangler throwing food on your back and bare feet so that the creatures peck at you. It is an incredibly strange sensation, although not entirely terrible (speaking only for myself). That said, I did have to fight desperately to keep them out of my shorts both during the back and the foot massage. The food was getting a little too close to causing accidental beastiality, which I’d much prefer to avoid. Susie was not the biggest fan of the massages (and by that I mean not at all) without them trying to get in her shorts, but she thrived at being flock leader.
To make it even better, there were a handful of puppies wandering around who were about a month old. (The owner said 4 months when we asked how old, but we are 99% sure based on everything we know that he meant 4 weeks.) They were the cutest freaking creatures, and we each had one curled up in our arms fast asleep for the longest time while we ate our banh xeo and waited out the torrential rains.
We also met two backpackers from the UK and Australia who had met a couple days prior at a hostel and decided to hit a few different places together. It’s always fun to chat and compare travel stories, and it was a great way to pass the time while it stormed.
***Remember, when customs asks, we did NOT visit any farms or come close to any livestock or poultry.***
“The pub with cold beer”
After leaving the ducks, we were on a mission to find food nearby because as delicious as the banh xeo had been, it not been nearly enough food for me, and I was melting… FAST. (Hangry Less is not a pretty sight.) One of the closest restaurants was the pub with cold beer. Yes, that is the literal name, and I have provided proof of such. We decided it sounded as good as anything else and headed that way.
We enjoyed some delicious food overlooking the mountains and a river, and I had a Bia Saigon (beer of Vietnam) in honor of the name.
Drivin Around
Because we missed out on parts of the park due to the weather delay, we decided to go for a drive after dinner to explore. We meandered our way through some of the Eastern areas that we hadn’t gotten to earlier until dusk started to settle in. The impending rain and darkness saw us winding our way back to town because I didn’t want to tussle with driving the motorbike in the dark and the rain with a passenger princess (@Susie). Each one is tough enough on its own, let alone the combination.
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