March 24 - Inland

On this day, I decided not to follow the coast and the main road, this would have taken me southeast - so I headed directly south, on smaller roads, venturing inland, towards the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, boasting some of the largest caves in the world. This part of Vietnam is very "narrow", it is just 100 km from the Laos border in the west to the South China Sea in the east.

When writing about this day, I had to "cheat" - I did not have a lot of recollections of what had happened, but then looking at the photos I had taken, the memories became (somewhat) vivid again. So let me include some of the impressions.

A war memorial just outside Vinh

Transport at a small village

A school celebration, which I filmed (and then was filmed myself...)

Newly-built catholic church

Skinny dip

A "romantic" hut

Wonderful mountains

A bit apprehensive...

Such was the road for the most part that day...

Really, the mountains were breathtaking - the weather was a bit gloomy, but it made the peaks look even more mysterious. I was quite glad to have chosen this road.

After riding some 175 kilometers, some of it in the dark, I got to a town, where a big Saturday evening catholic mess was in process.

Mess in process

From here, I found quite a horrible restaurant/motel, the restaurant was more of a shed, the motel room like a prison cell, without window. I had an OK dinner, where the lady serving me brought the left-overs from another table at the end of my dinner - she probably saw that I was still hungry. It was OK place for this one night.