Vietnam: Phong Nha and Ke Bang National Park

After a 45 min cab ride from Dong Hui, we arrived at Farmstay, a hotel kinda in the middle of no where, run by an Australian man named Ben and his Vietnamese wife named Bick. Ben, Bick, and most of Bick's family live right on the same road as well. The view from the hotel was amazing, mountains and rice paddies. It was nice to be in the countryside.

Our view from our room

After taking a nap until about 9 am we got up and had breakfast (all the meals were cooked by Bick's family and they were amazing). Then we put on all the dry clothes we had and a nice air-traffic controller coat lent to me by Ben, and hopped on the back of motorbikes and drove towards Ke Bang National Park. The National Park is one UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. Phong Nha and the surrounding towns are very rarely visited by tourists so the sight of a western in the area is almost novel. Westerners are also usually not allowed into the National Park so Ben had to go buy us tickets and then take us through the back entrance in order for us to get in.

Rachelle and I with Ben and Bick's brother (our drivers)

On the way to the back entrance we drove through some very poor villages. These people live off of $2 a day usually and many of them are Catholic. Many people, especially in the countryside, were converted to Catholicism when the French occupied Vietnam, however when the communist government redistributed the land, those who were Catholic were given the worst land available. Often times the land was not suitable for rice paddies and instead they could only grow sticky rice. There is also a lot of quarrying rock. We saw women up on the mountainside doing the same quarrying jobs as the men.

Once we entered the park, about 100 meters in we were lucky enough to see monkeys on the side of the cliff on our right. The monkeys were Douc Langer monkeys, an endangered species native to Vietnam. Ben said we were really lucky to have spotted any.

Next we went to a hike along a river. The river was actually two different rivers, one coming from the entrance to an underground cave right near the trail and the other coming from higher up in the mountains. The water had a turquoise tint to it, apparently the mountains were all made of limestone which reacts with the water and creates the tint.

The opening to the underground cave is right behind us

We continued driving towards Paradise Cave. The views were amazing. We were literally in a jungle but with mountains everywhere. I felt like I was in the movie Tarzan. It was amazing.

Paradise Cave at one time was the biggest cave in the world. It is about 100m tall when you're inside and it goes back about 34 km. We only went back 1km but it was still the biggest cave I have ever seen. Our tour guide was quite funny. It was just Rachelle and I and our tour guide in the cave and she kept asking us to guess what the rock formations looked like. So we would guess something and she would say... "Well actually this is what most people think...". Honestly they just look like rocks... but ok. She was nice so that's all that counts. She also showed the place that was supposed to be where Jesus was born. We told her we had heard a different story...

Reminded me of Ferngully

After the cave we drove to an intersection. Since before we entered the National Park we had been driving on the Ho Chi Minh trail that heads South to Saigon. The intersection we came to was with Highway 20, which was the road the North Vietnamese soldiers built heading into Laos and then South through Cambodia to Saigon.

The road was built so that it wound along the bottom of the mountains so it was more difficult for the US pilots to see and bomb. The US bombed the crap out of the Ho Chi Minh trail and Highway 20, which is the reason Laos is the most bombed country in the world. Bombs littered the National Park and the surrounding area. Most have been removed but it was definitely not in your best interest to go off and explore on any unmarked trail. Outside of the park in the rice paddies you could see craters now filled with water, from the bombs. Ben told us a story that only a year or two ago some boys were fishing in one of the crater pools and pulled up an unexploded bomb. Their father, who was deaf because he had been near a bomb when it exploded during the war, saw them playing with it and ran over and threw it as far as he could. It exploded after he threw it.

The small lakes in the middle of the rice paddies are bomb craters

So at the intersection we turned onto Highway 20 toward Laos and went to the Eight Lady Cave and temple which is the main sanctuary for people to honor the soldiers who died on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. During the war there were 8 women working on the trail right near this cave when US pilots began to bomb the trail. The women took refuge in a cave and survived the attack but the entrance to the cave was blocked and no one could get them out. The women starved to death. Now there are 8 altars, one where each of the women were found crouched when they died.
Bick's family. Afterwards we huddled around a bucket of coals, since nothing has heat in Vietnam, and shared a beer or two. We also tried a shot of Bick's family's home brewed rice wine. That was interesting.
Ben shared a story with us about his buddy back in Australia who had fought in the Vietnam war and was quite appalled when he found out Ben was marrying Bick. However, once he met Bick he loved her. When Ben and Bick got married, Ben's family and friends came to Vietnam for a family gathering at Bick's parents' house. Ben's friend had previously found out that he had fought in the same area at the same time that Bick's mom fought as a soldier for the North Vietnamese. Bick's father was also fought for the North Vietnamese as did most of Bick's aunts and uncles. Needless to say Ben's friend was a little nervous about meeting Bick's family. When Ben told his new family that his friend had been in Vietnam fighting for the South the family all got up and gave him one big group hug. Ben said his friend just started crying.

"No Drunk, No Home" = "I'm not going home until I'm drunk"

This story and a few others that Ben shared with us made it sound like many Vietnamese people are very receptive to Americans and other veterans coming back to Vietnam. Many Americans I guess have come back to the villages they once pillaged or destroyed and have started orphanages and other community projects and, from what I understand, have been very well received. 
The next morning we took a train to Hue and continued our journey in Central Vietnam but Phong Nha was probably the coolest part of our Vietnam trip.