Phong Nha

This is not a criticism of the farm stay, just an observation. It's on the edge of a small village surrounded by rice fields, so there isn't a lot to do in the evenings and even if you do have a couple of beers by the fire the whole place closes down pretty early. After my visit to the cave I hung out with the four girls I'd met on the tour and we ate dinner together and had a beer, a nice relaxing end to an awesome day. The following day I signed up for another tour, the bike tour to Phong Nha cave itself and it ended up just being us five ladies, Jessica, Lisa, Tessa, Condice and I. It took us two hours to cycle seven kms, we just kept stopping to take photos. The people were so friendly and the children would come out to high 5 us as we went by. We eventually made it to Son Trach and met up with Pete, he'd brought two other people down with him in the Jeep. We got on the boat and the river took us right into the cave, very cool. Once again it was just our group in the cave which made it even more amazing. The cave isn't as big as Paradise cave but I am glad I got to see it and the boat ride in was wonderful. After lunch the others left me at a coffee shop, I wanted to take my time over my coffee, I ended up cycling back to the farm stay alone, no problem. The next day Saturday, was cold and wet. I put on my socks and long sleeved top and didn't move from the farm stay all day, it was not nice and I really wasn't prepared for the drop in temperature. I spent the evening drinking beer by the fire. I don't think I did much the next day either, although I did get a lie in, which I was very glad of and I went for a walk down to the village with another couple of girls I'd met, Mikki and Helen. I had been supposed to leave that day but Denise had asked me to stay one more day, I agreed, who wouldn't? It's a great place and I don't know if I'll ever come back again. It's certainly unlikely that I"ll come back while Denise and Mike are still both there. My last day was supposed to be a lazy one but a few people decided to go to the "Pub with cold beer" for a chicken lunch instead of doing the bike tour so I went there. We had to cycle along these muddy tracks on shopping bicycles, I fell into a hedge on the way there. At least it wasn't a rice paddy and/or cow shit! Although only about seven of us cycled to the pub there ended up being about twenty of us for lunch. I got to see the whole process, from the catching of the chickens, to the killing, plucking and finally cooking. I made myself watch as the chickens had their throats cut as I felt that if I couldn't then I shouldn't really be eating them. I don't know if that makes sense, but it does to me. Lunch was great. And before I knew it I was back at the farm stay and my ride into Dong Hoi was there. Unfortunately I didn't get dropped off in Dong Hoi as I thought I was going to be, I got dropped off in another village sitting on Highway one, Bo Trach. There was nothing to do for the three hours that I had to wait for the over priced sleeper bus that I was to catch from there. Then I got given a ticket for Hanoi, I tried to change it but to no avail, then when the bus went through Ninh Binh at 5am I decided that I didn't want to get off anyway. That's somewhere else for me to go when I come back to Vietnam next. And suddenly I was in Hanoi with no Anna to visit.