Nice gentle rolling hills – started with rain – expecting a very wet cycle, we were happy that the rain and drizzle stopped after about an hour, and it was dry (though overcast) for the rest of the trip.
Got to Dong Hoi – a middle sized city that probably doesn’t see many tourists, or at least they only pass through on the way to Phong Nha.
As it was a short day, we ended were in Dong Hoi with plenty of time – at a grandiose Hotel with only about a dozen guests (for about 25€ a night).
After checking in and taking a long hot shower and revelling in the luxuriousness, we went down to reception to get information about shipping some stuff to Bangkok. They ordered some guy from a courier service who came and weight and packed our stuff (Tent, extra clothes, unneeded items) and told us it would cost 150$. We think that he used the weight from the scale (it was set to lbs) as kgs, and then he only had cheap express and expensive express. After a long challenging discussion with the exceedingly helpful ladies at reception – they called the local post office (about 300m away) and explained to us that we could go there and have it shipped for less than 30$ (more what we had in mind). They gave us their phone number in case we had difficulties at the post office.
So, off to the post office to try our luck there. As we walked in to the fair-sized post office, we were directly pointed to a lady who was I guess the english expert in the office. Very friendly and helpful…she helped pack the box, and arranged everything for us for truly 20$ – while I was negotiating and discussing with her, Jörg made friends with someone who spent years in Rostock and was having a great conversation with him in German…(not the first time we met someone who could speak quite passable German having spent time there in former East-Germany times).
We then meandered through town, and had a good look into Vietnamese City life (without a major tourist influence) – the roads/sidewalks were in very poor state, but the shops themselves were quite impressive, and the fashion and shoe stores were quite “modern” and western-looking.
The only real sight for us to see, was an old wall/gateway, that is pretty much all that was left of the town after the American war – this town was just north of the DMZ and saw a lot of bombing and devastation 50 years ago – you can hardly tell nowadays…
(44km / 230m)