I enjoyed my visit to Dong Hoi. Everything went to plan, unlike my visit to Ninh Binh and I had two days or riding a moped around the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park.<\/p>\n
I arrived in Dong Hoi at about 05:30 in the morning, having been thrown around comprehensively by the night bus. I left the night bus feeling thoroughly dissatified, having spent most of it analysing the situation that I had been presented with in Ninh Binh, having not faced anything like it in the past. I left the bus, after trying to get them to show me where the bus station was, but had to speak to a woman in what looked like a booking office, which happened to be open. She reluctantly gave me the directions to the bus station and having been lying down for the last 7.5 hours, I decided to walk there.<\/p>\n
I got to the bus station and the woman in there attempted to explain that I actually needed another bus station, which was 2 Km away. This she didn’t do a very good job of, as I could understand the diagram but didn’t know why I had to go to this place that was 2 Km away, but luckily a helpful bystander stepped in and explained that it was another bus station. I walked outside and got a motorbike taxi (xe om) to the next bus station. There I asked when the next bus to Son Trach was, but that answer I got was “14:00”, meaning that I would have to wait 6 hours. I think the bus drivers were on holiday for Tet, but I walked outside where I found my original xe om driver and got him to take me there for 250 000 VND.<\/p>\n
The ride was about 1.5 hours and we passed some spectacular scenery in the meantime, but I was glad to get to Son Trach, as the motorbike hadn’t been built for long journeys. Once there I called the Phong Na Farmstay, which had provided me with advice when in Ninh Binh and they explained that the Jungle Bar was the place to go. I got back on the motorbike and the driver took me there.<\/p>\n
In the Jungle Bar I met a German guy, who was only in Son Trach for a day and wanted to rent a motorbike. Still dazed from the overnight bus journey, I agreed to go with him and dumped my stuff in the nearest hotel. I think the German guy (who I can’t remember the name of) was getting slightly frustrated towards the end, as I kept delaying him with trips to get lunch and sun cream, but he was very polite about it. We got about 2 Km down the road and then my bike cut out. After re-starting it with the manual kick-start, we got another 1 Km before it cut out again. I called the bloke who had rented us the bikes and he came out and couldn’t find a problem.<\/p>\n
After getting to Paradise Cave, both me and the German walked inside, but decided to split up as I was going a lot slower than he was. He offered me a cookie and that was the last I saw of him. I spent the rest of the day walking around the Paradise Case and trying to get home, one a motorcycle that kept cutting-out. Luckily I found out that if you left it for a bit and then tried to start it manually, it worked, but only on the 3rd attempt did it stay running for any period of time. I got back to the hotel as it was getting dark and decided to swap the bike for another one the next day.<\/p>\n
The next day was spent riding down part of the Ho Chi Minh trail, which I enjoyed immensely. It was totally deserted with a two-lane concrete path leading through the jungle and around the hills in the national park. The only people I saw for 40 Km were the people in the patrol stations and 1 other foreigner who waved as he went past in the opposite direction on his bike.<\/p>\n
Getting back to the hotel fairly early, I got something to eat and planned my next journey to Dong Ha. This involved getting up early for a local bus which would take me directly to Dong Ha bus station.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I enjoyed my visit to Dong Hoi. Everything went to plan, unlike my visit to Ninh Binh and I had two days or riding a moped around the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park. I arrived in Dong Hoi at about 05:30 in the morning, having been thrown around comprehensively by the night bus. I left […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-around-the-world-part-1"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":583,"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions\/583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}