Gourdins on the Go: Vietnam Part 2

After an hour and a half flight to Dong Hoi, we found ourselves at what might be the smallest airport I've ever visited. It could accommodate one plane. It had one departure gate and one arrival area. After we walked from the plane (You can see the blue plane in the background) to the baggage claim they truck your bags to the baggage carousel. I'm all like "What's the point?" they should just let us take our bags right off the plane.

As Max was watching the Grinch on his iTouch, I caught this guy enjoying the movie as well.

A van picked us up and about 5 minutes into the ride we must have looked bored because the driver popped in a DVD. I'm thinking maybe he's putting on a bootleg copy of Little Mermaid for the kids. Instead, it was the video of the local bull fights. The kind where 2 bulls try to gore each other. I can't understand why it's not on Netflix.

We arrived at the Phong Nha Farmstay. It was way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. Like, this was the only thing you could call a hotel for miles. It's owned by an Australian guy and his Vietnamese wife and is part backpacker hostel and part B&B. The food and drink were excellent, the people and hospitality were great, and the tours we went on were amazing.

These rice fields that surround the farmstay are massive and were being worked by hand by about a hundred farmers. Old school rice farming not like Korea at all.

With the weather a bit cold and no TV, we were forced to make our own fun.

This area is known as Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park. This area is just being developed for tourists and we definitely got the feeling we were among the first wave of people to come up here. The limestone deposits make for stunning vistas, blue water, and some of the largest caves in the world.

Shannon and her inappropriate hiking shoes.

Shannon was complaining there were no pics of her so I had to immediatly take one. Here she is walking up to Paradise Cave.

At moments like this I wonder why I even bother with taking pictures. You can't possibly convey the size or beauty of things like this. BTW Isabella had run off with some kids at this point.

Here is the same picture as above, but with the cave visible. It was long.

After Paradise Cave, we drove through the scenery and went for a lovely nature walk that we were assured had been swept for explosives. Apparently they found 17 bombs on the path alone. Laos is the most heavily bombed country, but this area of Vietnam is the most heavily bombed area on the planet.

We ended the cold day with a short kayak trip down the river above and docked at the mouth of a huge cave called Dark Cave. We dumped everything we didn't want to get wet and put headlamps on. We swam so far into that cave that it lived up to it's name. Isabella whimped out, but Max was a trooper. It was the size of an airplane hangar. Later, the guides urged us to take shots of rum to warm up. It was an amazing day.

The next day we opted for a motorbike tour that required no motorbikes. We were taken by Jeep to a Vietnamese War Memorial, then to boats that will take you to Phong Nha Cave.

My wife's graceful entrance into our horseless carriage.

The tunnel was low and during the rainy season no boats fit through the tunnel. The below picture is really an attempted picture of the low ceilings you have to pass under and NOT the Vietnamese girl's butt and you'll never prove otherwise.