Phong Nha

Arrived 20/07/2011

Taking the good with the bad.

Everything as usual in the morning, gear up my bike… ah there’s something missing. 

“Where’s my helmet?” left it clipped to the bike overnight.  I’m in the middle of nowhere, the place is locked down with massive steel gates, thought it would safe and I've not had any other problems before.  First time leaving my helmet on the bike though. Maybe someything shiny and easy to take.

One guy staying there who could speak English helped to translate what the owners were saying.

“Ah someone took it last night.  Some teenagers.”

“What do you mean!? You watched them take it and did nothing!?”

He then offered me a piece of s#it moto helmet that didn’t fit to replace mine.  That seems like a great trade off, all my problems are solved. Aaarrrggghhh!!!!

The poor guy continues to explain to me,

“They don’t understand (respecting people’s property) you see.  It is different in Vietnam” No beep beep they don’t beepin beep under-beeping-stand! BEEEEEEPPPP.

So I wandered down to the couple of local shops with the false hopes of miraculously seeing it.  No chance, it’s like finding a needle in the hay stack or in this case 1 person out of the 90 odd million population of Vietnam and they would have already happy driven away after steeling it.

A bunch of cyclists rode past.  None of them wearing my helmet but think I recognised one guy as Tony Nguyen from the bike shop in Hanoi.  “Hello.” I was just ignored.  I currently don’t seem to exist.

Well that’s my anger vented at the crappy situation and I shouldn’t have left my helmet down there or at least I should have locked my bike and helmet.  The owner was then nice enough to do a wee scout around the town to see if he could find it or the culprit but no success.  They then gave me a refund on my room, 150,000VND to help buy a new helmet, not much but think they realised how I felt.

Well looks like I’ll be cycling for four days without helmet until I get to Hue and probably buy myself some budgo moto helmet that fits.  What can you do, it’s not the end of the world it’s just a stink situation. Cycling away I started to think I was probably lucky I still had my bike!

Isn't it a lovely road?

The good. The Ho Chi Minh road continued to be a fantastic road to cycle along.  Amazing scenery winding through a valley of krast landscape and rice fields.  About 25km down and who do I run into… the group of cyclists from earlier and I was right about Tony.  They were packing up their bikes into their van to ‘transfer’ to Phong Nha to visit the cave there.  Taking a van transfer was not quite what I thought guided cycle touring was but going from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh in 17 days is pretty quick and now I know why.  Anyway had yarn with the South African couple doing the tour telling them of my situation and asked Tony if he knew a cycle shop in Hue I could buy a proper cycle helmet.  He laughed and shook his head.  I didn’t think there was anything.  Then out of the boot of his van he pulls out a helmet for me try on.  Holy torledo chips I could not believe my luck!!!  Not the best fit but I’m not going to anything this good until I get to the UK.  900,000VND and I had a helmet again from the most random chance luck roadside sales.  I later thought of the probability of seeing these guys on this stretch of road and just after I had my helmet stolen.  Lucky but not.

And the next best thing was that my lunch today was rice, beef and an egg omelette!!!!! So good.

Phong Nha is set in a World Heritage National Park.  A nice area and apparently there was some big cave close by.  So after arriving in Phong Nha (a bit later than planned due to the morning's disaster) I got myself a room, dumped my gear and headed out on my bike to check out the cave. Got within about 100m of it and that was as far as I could go.  A river blocked me and seemed you had to get a boat from town to get over.  Oh well I've seen loads of caves on my travels so far and didn't feel paying to see another.

A nice big National Park sign whacked onto the natural landscape.
Seems a bit of a contradiction

The township along the river

The cave and I think there was a fair bit more up the hill too

Phong Nha is also where the Ho Chi Minh Road splits into an eastern and western section.  The western side throws you into no-man's land talking to Tony (bike guide) and a bunch of motorbike tourist who I met on the road pulling a bike apart to try and fix it (happy that wasn't me and made my helmet situation not seem so bad) and some massive hills.  The eastern side is the easy way out and hopefully still kind of quiet even though it runs close to Highway 1.  As you guessed I'll be going east due to time constraints and not that keen or in the frame of mind for the unknown adventure of the west - another day I think.

The new helmet