Motorbikes and mountains
Trip Start
Aug 12, 2006
1
18
31
Trip End
Sep 11, 2006
Halong Bay,
Vietnam
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Our first tour stop was at the hospital army cave. We walked up about 50 steps or so, into a dark hidden cave. There was a steel door at the entrance to the cave, and soon appeared a little old Vietnamese man in old army attire. He was our guide for the cave, and we also had an interpreter. He was very sweet, a retired army veteran who now takes tourists around the cave and has much pride in his work
Back of the bike
.The cave was used during the war by the Vietnamese army, mainly as a hospital. It was dark inside, obviously, and there were large empty rooms inside, each with a different purpose. The old man then began singing songs, which were hauntingly beautiful with the echo transmitting through the caves. It was a chilling experience, to think people lived in these caves during the war, and how scary it all must have been. As it had been raining we were unable to go to the top of the cave, but apparently there were craters where the Americans used to try and bomb the area.
Next stop was the National Park, where we climbed up a 420m mountain to see a stunning view of the skyline after a slippery and trecherous ascent - well, it wasn't that bad (but it wasn't easy either). We took the slightly longer, less steep route. None of us fell over, which was surprising considering the amount of mud around, and slippery rocks. We clambered our way to the top, past the mosquitoes, centipedes and also a really cute bright red crab in the middle of the forest!
It was quite slippery on the way down, so I used my hands more than my feet to cling to the trees and rocks, and made my way, monkey-like, to the bottom
Jessie and the cave man
. We all got a little bit muddy, and washed ourselves in a makeshift pool at the bottom of the mountain.We ended our tour at the beach, and spent the rest of the afternoon there, a nice way to chill out after our earlier expedition. I took a dip in the sea, the water was clean and refreshing. Angeline and I tried to wash our clothes in the water, but the mud on my jeans just wasn't coming off.
After a couple of hours of chilling out, we were back at the guest house to freshen up. We had dinner at a local restaurant, and sat outside near the harbour. It was a pretty evening, as the skies were black but occasionally lit up with a bright electric thunderstorm in the distance over the sea. The meal was fairly basic, spoilt only by the number of crazy ants running around everywhere on this island.
We went back to the bar that we were at last night, and had a few drinks and a couple of games of pool before calling it a night.
