Day 13 (20 Feb) – Vinh to Phong Nha

Feeling better, but not 100%, I packed my bags and after a lackluster breakfast of toast and fried eggs, I made my way to the bus station.  I decided to try the bus system for one to try it out, but most importantly, it hopefully would get me in to Dong Hoi early enough so that I would still get to Phong Nha in daylight (train would get me in to Dong Hoi at 16:35 with 2 hours cycling yet….)

  The lady at the counter remembered me from the day before, and I got my ticket and we went out to a considerably smaller bus than I expected.  My bike was roughly tossed into the back of the bus, and 3 of my bags thrown on top, and I sat (as the first passanger) on the seat next to exit (I would have most leg-room here.  The man I thought might be our bus driver (a one-eyed man!!) yelled at me for putting my rucksack on the seat next to me, and that I should only use one seat….  turns out he was not the bus-driver, but the bus-“optimizer”.

When about 15 of the 20 odd seats were full, we pulled away and headed through Vinh direction south.  At every intersection the optimizer was out yelling at people trying to get more people in the bus.  Every time I though were were full to bursting, he rearranged people, and boxes and bags, and suddenly, at the next major crossing another 3-4 people got on.  In total we were over 50 people in the bus for the most part of the trip – all sitting except the Optimizer who was then leaning against my legs (where did all that leg room go?).  The bus trip went from 8:30am until 12:30pm…..

As we were getting to Dong Hoi (about 30km away) people started getting off, so that quite quickly we were down to about 10 people.  I talked the Optimizer into letting me off at some intersection so that I wouldn’t have to cycle all the way out of the city (saving me some 15-off km of cycling).  Not a problem.  We stopped, got out, got the bike out, bags out, and everything was dumped on the side of the road, and they were off….  Amazingly, the bike survived the trip (mud guards were all bent, but that was quickly fixed). I packed everything on the bike and was off – first time cycling again in 3 days.  I had a light 30-odd km with gentle rolling ups-and-downs to get into Phong Nha – next to the national park (of the same name).

The countryside was quite lush green – either the planting of the rice started this far south so much earlier, or the growth of rice in 2-3 weeks is quite impressive – here everything was green, where further north a few weeks ago, they were still preparing the fields and had just  started planting…

An hour and a half later, I was there…. took some pictures on arrival in town, and was quickly joined by some Vietnamese guy who wanted his picture taken with me (he came out of nowhere). The hotel was quickly found, and I joined up with Jörg (her arrived about an hour earlier) in the bar next door.

Phong Nha, is quite the Backpackers town – lots and lots of young backpackers from Europe/Australia/N.America in lots of hostels.  The restaurants and bars cater to this crowd quite well, serving lots of western foods with a Vietnamese twist.  And they have 2 for 1 G+T happy hour from 5-6pm!! (under 2€ for 2 G+Ts).