From Da Nang, we headed northerly…decided to take the heritage train to Hue (pronounced Hway). This train was supposed to be a bit more cultural; they had an entertainment community car which was pretty Hokie…they have the craziest obsession with Karaoke here. The community car was decorated in Vietnamese flag, they sold beer and trinkets and had a guy or girl dressed in trad garb singing either on their own or karaoke….thank goodness the scenery out the window was beautiful. Other services that are offered onboard the train included a foot bath …this definitely seemed odd. (They bring you a fake plastic wood looking tub, then boil water in kettles and fill it with sprinkled dried flower petals and you soak your feet for as long as you want in this tub that spills over with every bump on the rail). The train was interesting but still worth the experience overall.
It was a quick trek to the hotel to check in, grab some food, a walk around and then found a cocktail bar with the best cocktails of our lives; Todd’s drink was infused with pipe smoke. Here is a short night video of Hue: Hue-at-night.html
We stayed in the central district with lots of restaurants and as per the norm….there were interesting smells on the walk back home to the hotel. At the same time we turned and looked at each other and said Oh, what was that smell? Hmm It could be soup or dirty feet!
There was alot of history in Hue, the former Vietnam capital…Imperial City is a fully walled and gated city where the imperial family once lived, back in the early 1800’s. The entire city is moated, it is 5 square km and another UNESCO heritage site. We spent 4 hours here, we walked it in 31C temperature (🥵🥵) and we immediately went to the hotel to hang out at the pool for the remainder of the day! Here are some pics: Hue-photos.html
It was a short trip to Hue, as we boarded another train for a 3 hour trek north to the small farming commune of Dong Hoi. We booked a beach hotel for a week as we decided we were moving too often and needed some longer stints where we just stayed put. Unfortunately the only sunny days was the day we got there and the day before we left! The rest of the time was cloud and rain…but we made the best of it as there were great day trips here…
We booked a day tour (which normally is not our thing) and it was a 10 hour day tour to the fantastic and famous caves in the Phong Ma Ke Bang National park.
The van picked us up at 7:45 and then we picked up all the other tourists before we headed the 75 km trek thru jungle and corn fields and a beautiful valley to the parking lot, then loaded onto a golf cart, and walk up a 500 meter pathway to finally reach Paradise Cave.Golf cart thru jungle
This cave was found in 2005 by local hunter. He reported it to the gov and they got a British team to open it up and turn it into what it is today, and opened to the public in 2010. This cave is the longest dry cave in the world stretching 31.4 km total and we only got to see 1 km of It. The cave itself was 100 metre tall by 80 metres wide. The interior temp is 18 c year around, and this was the first time in 52 days I had to wear my hoodie!
Paradise-cave.html Didn’t even feel like we were on earth…it was like we were on a different planet. It. was. amazing! After our tour of the first cave we got in a boat (River-boat-to-cave.html) and then we boated through another cave! It was crazy cool! Caving-by-boat.html There is a total of 14 km of river in the cave, and apparently this river goes into Laos.
We did end up renting a scooter for the entire time we were in Dong Hoi; decided we no longer cared if we got pulled over and fined and the traffic was very sane here. Explored the peninsula, the beach over there and saw all the new hotel and housing construction…it is insane how much is being built and equally insane the amount of unfinished hotels that just sit there…we assume a lot of investment pulled out due to covid. Here is an example of us roaming around to see things: Dragon-bushes.html
Also found a beautiful Catholic church (apparently a large catholic population in and around the city) an empty beach, an empty golf course, a brand new playground waiting for kids. Then we walked around a moat, built in the early 1800’s before we randomly found night go carting! Night-go-carts.html
On day 4, we hired a private driver to pick us up at 730 in his electric car and take us out on a self guided DMZ (demilitarized zone) day trip. We have learned that for the most part you can’t drive faster than 60km/hr on highways…also the Vietnamese speak in distance (as opposed to time like us Canadians). It was 110 km to the citadel and took 2.5 hours to get there! Then 9 km (20 mins) to the Basilica …. The old one was bombed out and they are in the process of still building a new Church. Then to the 17th parallel bridge – where north and south Vietnam were divided ( in 1954) and then came together in 1976. (17 km took 42 mins). And last was the Vinh Moc tunnels built at various levels below ground (11, 18 & 25 metres down)…the town of 600 lived underground from 1966-1972. 16 babies were born during that time and 14 of them are still alive today. The tunnels took 20 months to build and the people that lived in the town built the tunnels. They also used trenches for bike riding and moving cows around….A lot of history here and hard to believe the conditions of living and war. Here is a video on what we saw in the tunnels. (Apologies I have no way to edit out the French tourists, the first part of the tunnel has been reinforced, but when we start going down the stairs that is the more “original” tunnel):Vinh-moc-tunnel.html
Here are some pics: Dong Hoi but mostly caving.html
Our week in Dong Hoi sped by faster than we thought. Next thing we knew, we were headed back to the train station for another week long stint in Vinh. Although all these central Vietnam locations are less than 200 km, the train trips are still 4-5 hours long; there aren’t a lot of extra stops, unless the train has to wait for a southbound train to pass but the trains aren’t really going faster than 60 km / hr. When we arrived in Vinh we realized that the hotel we booked wasn’t in the location we thought it was….it’s an hour outside of Vinh on the south side instead of in the city. Turned out the hotel was very isolated, it was off season so not all the amenities were available, there was no scooter rentals, no Grab available, no access to other attractions, no stores, no other restaurants nearby and the forecast was cloudy, high of 21 and rain for the entire 7 days. We weren’t complaining (yet) it’s just not where we thought we were going to be. The beach was flat and wide, great for walking but watch where you walk…don’t want to be stepping on garbage like lightbulbs…By day 2 we had ants in our pants and it didn’t look like the hotel was going to change our reservation to the sister hotel as we hoped, so we hailed a taxi to the city to get a scooter and came back with a motorcycle. The hour long car ride to the city made Todd realize we can’t do that on a scooter, so he decided we needed a motorcycle for the highway driving and over the next 4 days we managed to put 500 km on it! Here are a few pics: Vinh-pics.html
Our tour included Uncle Ho square and a temple on a hill, a triangle route we turned into a farming drive along Ho Chi Minh trail and finally Vinh Old Citadel and Uncle Ho’s birthplace. Being out of tourist areas for the past couple weeks has been interesting…. I can’t even begin to estimate how many times we have said ‘Hello!’ to kids in the past week and answering the follow-up inquiry of ‘Where are you from?’ We have also been asked multiple times to take pictures with strangers on the street or at attractions or temples. It’s bizarre to be a celebrity…and we were ready to move on.