Asia

We took the (day) train from Da Nang to Dong Hoi to check out some fairly recently discovered caves.  The train was pretty slow, but we managed to get there after about six looooooooooooong hours.  The views were amazing though and made the journey worth it.

We ended up going into a couple of different caves.  One of them was called Phong Nha Cave.

We loaded up on a boat, motored down the river and then the two boat operators rowed us into the cave.  It had a beautiful entrance and outside of lighting was completely in its natural state.

It was interesting to learn that because the rivers rise so much during rainy season, the caves are closed due to flooding all the way to the ceilings.

Once we rowed throughout the cave, we explored on foot briefly.  The locals told us that during the “American Agression in Vietnam” (aka Vietnam War), several thousand Vietnamese would live in the caves to hide from the bombers.  Just outside the mouth of the cave were what appeared to be bomb scars in the rock.

After seeing that cave, we motored over to the Dark Cave.  This one was my favorite.  The only way in was swimming or boating up to the entrance and then walking in.  Outside of our helmet lamps, the cave was completely dark.  We walked and hiked and climbed and slid about 1000 meters back to end up in a giant mud pond.  We had a bit of luck to end up as the only ones in the entire cave the whole time we were in the cave but for when we were exiting.  It was beautiful and spooky all at the same time.  Obviously I don’t have pictures, but suffice it to say that every single one of us had sore muscles the next day to remind us of our spelunking.  Even the kids were sore.

There was a really cool water play area set up in the river a few hundred meters from the cave.  Zip lines, water bikes, an over the water obstacle course, and other activities were crowded with backpackers and westerners.  Should anyone need a tip, please don’t make the mistake I did which was to apply sunscreen and then immediately get on a zip line attempting to go out in the water.  It turns out sunscreen makes your hands very slippery increasing the difficulty of holding yourself on the zip line.  Oops.  No serious injuries so all’s well that ends well.

We rode bicycles back to the start of our tour.

The highlight of that portion was taking a bike ferry across the river.  We were all pretty sure we were going overboard, but luckily we all stayed on.

We slept that night in Dong Hoi (in a cool little AirBnB run by a British man).  The rooms were just above his restaurant and rented out for $10USD per night.  Outside of the dogs, it was probably our cheapest stay on the trip.  It right on the river so we were able to watch the locals fishing in the harbor.

Leaving the next day proved slightly troublesome, but after a 10 hour delay due to some fog, we boarded a plane to head to Hanoi.  I would rate Dong Hoi as a must do for anyone stopping in Vietnam.

After arriving Da Nang, we took a car to a beach house just outside of Hoi An on An Bang Beach.  It was nice to get away from the city and into nature.  For one week, we basically ate, slept, and played on the beach.  The weather wasn’t the best and in fact, there were a couple of days when the beach was closed to swimming due to the surf being high, but the kids had a great time playing in the sand and running all over the beach.

I was personally shocked by how cheap the food was, but more importantly, how incredibly good almost everything we ate was. Everywhere we go, the favorite is passion fruit juice. I hadn’t ever had passion fruit prior to Vietnam, but it is amazing. No wonder it is considered the nectar of the gods.

Hoi An involved two amazing highlights.  The first (by order of date) was that Scott arranged for us to do an all day bicycle tour of the surrounding villages of Hoi An.  We toured vegetable farms, learned how each family is allowed to rent 100 sq meters for their farm from the government, and how they grow their veggies.

We got an amazing lesson on how rice is farmed and its lifecycle, as well as how the Vietnamese rice farmers are amongst some of the poorest.  Part of the reason so many locals here wear face masks and long sleeves even in brutal heat is so that their skin is protected from the sun. They don’t want to appear to be poor like farmers with potentially darker skin. (This seems like the perfect place to show an obligatory photo of a farmer that let Keali and Scott ride his water buffalo.)

Another key learning was that, by and large, the Vietnamese people sleep on mats versus mattresses. Due to the extreme heat in summer, sleeping is far more comfortable by sleeping on woven mats which allow air circulation. We stopped and saw how sleeping mats are made: both handmade traditionally, as well as made by “machine”.

  The economics of these sleeping mats don’t seem to make a ton of sense since two people can only make two mats per day (and they sell for $6USD), while the one person operating a machine can make 11 mats per day which sell at $10USD. The ones made by machine are only purchased “by the rich people”.  Evidently, the boss man who owns the machines keeps a huge portion of the profits.  Reminds me of the CEOs in the USA.

One of my favorite stops on the bike tour was a pit stop where a local man who makes the basket boats by hand.  The man pictured is 88 years old and has 11 children plus too many grandchildren to count. 

No one in the family wants to take over his business, so he just keeps on making boats.  He can make one of the larger boats in about a month.  He was kind enough to let me try my hand at it.  It’s now clear that this is not my forte.

The all time favorite part of the Hoi An stop thought was having the incredible experience of having two different nights with glowing beaches.  We knew something special was happening because of red tides during the day. At night, the bioluminescent plankton were absolutely everywhere.  The sand glowed with each wave receding, and you could look out far into the ocean and see glowing waves breaking in the distance.  The kids were almost as excited about it as Scott and I.  Talk about a perfect learning opportunity!  And I’ll list it as one of my all time favorite travel memories. If only iPhones could properly photograph bioluminescent planktons…

Hoi An was a great stop indeed.

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