🎶 Water has gone under bridges, clouds have gone...
Since my departure from Tam Cốc, I have seen many beautiful places, starting with the mountains between Tam Cốc and Phong Nha. Very pretty mountains, except that it's raining...incessantly, an insistent drizzle. At some point, enough is enough. At the announcement of an inn in Thanh Chương, we give a turn of the handlebars and we find ourselves on the edge of a lake created by a hydroelectric dam, surrounded by tea fields.
It's all well and good, but we're soaked. After a good hot shower, it's time to think about our equipment except that... our pavilion has no heating. We borrow the inn's only hair dryer to dry our boots, one by one... and our pants... and our gloves... and so on...
Drying lasts all evening and part of the next day.
Fortunately, our travel bags are perfectly waterproof and the rest of our equipment is dry.
Over dinner that night, I was lucky enough to meet an inspiring young man from Israel. Bar decided to travel to discover the wide world. His journey will last a year... or more. We discuss his motivations, his goals, his discoveries... When he leaves the next day, I have the impression of seeing Marco Polo leave.
We stay two days at the hostel hoping that the weather will improve but it's a waste of time. It is therefore soaked, again ,that we arrive in Phong Nha and start the festival of the dryer, again, while enjoying a dream landscape.
Fortunately, the next day the temperature is drier. So we go on the motorbikes to the Phong Nha-Kẻ Bà ng National Park where the Paradise Cave is located.
A cave where tourists are directed, controlled, in order to keep it in good condition, given the crowds that enter it each year.
There are more exotic two- or three-day tours where you can sleep in the jungle and swim in the caves... but I like my little comforts and leave it up to others.
There is even a new cave, discovered in 2009, whose large room is spacious enough to fly a 747. You can visit it for the modest sum of $3000 US or take the virtual tour created by National Geographic.
For the past few days I've been freezing... day and night. However, the rain, the cold, the unheated rooms did not get the better of my good mood because I love Vietnam and the warm smiles that surround me.
