We arrived no trouble at around 4am. One of the guys from the bus company went round waking everyone up. We unloaded, grabbed our bags and set off in the wrong direction to the hostel. The hostel wasn't far so we realised very quickly. We arrived at the hostel, along with many other people and grabbed a place on the sofa. Then a dude who worked there came down and told us we could check in and sleep for the rest of the night for free. We were so grateful as we had only booked for the night of the 12th, not the 11th as well, and the sofas didn't look that comfy. We were put in a 6 bed ensuite dorm with 4 others who had also just arrived.
We got up late, around 11am, got ready and went to book the bus for the following day and some activities for tomorrow. We went into the first booking office we saw and chatted to a lady who told there was a new bus, starting tomorrow going to our destination that leaves at 8am. This meant we wouldn't have to get up at 3am to catch the 4am bus. We decided we might as well. This meant we only had the afternoon to explore the Phong Nha national park and caves, which are on the UNESCO list. The lady told us we could do an afternoon tour leaving at 12 to the Dark Cave so we booked on. It was 11:45. We ran back to the hotel, put our swimming costumes on underneath our clothes, grabbed our towels and other things we needed and legged it back with 3 minutes to spare. Predictably we didn't leave on time. We got in a car, just the two of us and the father of the girl we booked with (maybe) and he drove us down to the Dark Cave sight, telling us we were going to join a full day tour for the afternoon, which we did.
When we got there we put on life jackets, safety harnesses and helmets. Then we ziplined on (what I think he said was) the longest zipline in Vietnam down towards the cave. We were clipped on and you basically just sat down and off you went. From there we swam 20 metres to the cave entrance. We walked about 1km through the cave on wooden platforms, rocks, and through water and mud, to where we ended up. It was very slippy and there was unexpected and unseen dips in the path. Our destination was a thick, chocolate milk looking, mud pool. We got absolutely covered in mud. It was really weird as the mud was so thick it almost supported your weight so you could just sit down and float in it. After mucking about in the mud pool for a while, we walked back the way we came, washing ourselves as best we could on the way. When we reached the daylight of the cave entrance we got into double kayaks and after some difficulty and turning in many circles we managed to get ourselves to shore. There was several options as to what you could do here. We chose to do a short zip line where you hold on with your hands and then drop into the water at the end. I was a little scared at first but it was alot of fun. We did that a couple of times and then went and showered and got dressed before getting a minibus back with the group whose tour we had joined. We were dropped off outside the booking office we had left from at about 4:30pm. We had had an awesome time and we just hadn't excepted to do some much when we woke up this morning.
We went back to the hostel, showered and lazed around for a bit before having dinner in the hostel restaurant. I had beef wrapped in bacon in black bean sauce with rice. Lauren has grilled chicken and mash. We shared garlic bread to start. It was a pretty laid back evening. We then had to pack as we are getting the early bus tomorrow.
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