Vietnam - Mud, glorious mud

The night train wasn't bad, we both slept a bit and we weren't too crunched up. Mark's alarm went off at 5:30 and we both got up with 8 mins to spare before the train was due in. I really hope the other person in our cabin wasn't meant to get off at our stop as they slept through, and the train had another 24 hours to go until it's final destination!

We went straight to the hotel and Tim had haxored it so that our rooms were ready. It's a nice hotel, more more spacious, but then we are paying nearly double our £14 rate that we pay in Saigon.

Mark fought a tiger while trying to find fuel

We went for a look around town, the beach looks really nice, and the place is much less chaotic than what we're used to in other parts of Vietnam. We stopped for some breakfast and the locals were not so accommodating, they must be used to tourists!

Back to the hotel to make plans, Mark couldn't keep his eyes open and had to have an hours kip while Tim sorted out the bookings. We decided to get a bike between us to get around town on today and see a few things that were outside of walking distance. The first of these was the Bo Ha Waterfalls, the receptionist at our hotel gave us directions as "it wasn't on Google Maps", hmm, right. She also told us to tank up before we headed off.

Tim decided that we had 1/3 tank of fuel and that was enough so we laughed in her face and headed off to the waterfalls. After a few clicks, the gas tank was getting low and we couldn't find a petrol station. We asked for directions, following instructions like "Look for a yellow hotel and then find some shitty little shops". Somehow we did this and in the shop they sell little tubs of petrol in recycled water bottles. We brought one of these, although we're not convinced it's exactly Shell Optimax.

It was enough to get us to the waterfalls which involved driving down an untarmaced pot hole strewn road. Now, we're both on a crap little bike and we're quite big so the shock absorber didn't do much good as the suspension bottomed out time after time and you'd hear us both yelping as we hit a bump.

Once at the waterfalls we had to walk about 800m to where the falls actually were, why they wouldn't just let us drive that way we don't know. Both of our entrance fees plus parking it cost a little under 90p so we shouldn't complain.

At the base of the waterfall, there  were about 100m of rocks to negotiate. To make it easier there were red arrows painted on the rocks to show you the best way to go, even though it looked pretty obvious. However, that wasn't enough, someone insisted on showing us the way, for a small fee of about $1 obviously, so off we went on the most obvious adventure ever.

The waterfalls weren't that tall, but there was a pool at the bottom you could swim in so Tim jumped off some pretty impressive rocks and swam around a bit, he didn't find any lost treasure or secret caves behind the waterfall like in the films so our adventure ended there so we headed back (following the guide obviously).

On the way back Tim mentioned that we were getting low on fuel, apparently the cooking fat that we'd purchased from the old codger wasn't giving us the economy that we'd expected. Formula 1 teams take note, don't buy your fuel from a shanty town in Vietnam. So we decided to stop for fuel. Mark spotted a petrol station but the brakes were so bad on the bike we had (the speedo didn't work either), that Tim couldn't stop in time. About a mile up the road we ran out of fuel. Uh oh. However, by some blind luck we were only about 100 meters from a gas station so Tim pushed it there and filled it up. When it came to paying the girl who worked there, Tim got his wad of cash out which was a mix of dollars and Dongs, we paid her and she asked what the dollars were so we gave her a $1 note and it was like her happiest day ever. We're so generous :)

From there we grabbed something to eat back in the town, it was at an ex-pats bar so we felt a little bit more at home, there are lots of similar bars here, so we may end up speaking some proper English later rather than broken/louder english.

Hiding from Predators...

To try something different we headed to the mud baths, here you'd soak in soothing mud that is meant to extract toxins from your skin and stuff. We thought we'd give it a go and followed the road signs. For some reason we didn't decide to take a map or phone but it was ok, the signs got us there ok. We paid for the cheapest option, mud baths only and then proceeded to flap around in the mud like a pair of hippos. It was really warm and buoyant, so we floated around for a bit and relaxed.

Having just paid for the basic package we were then meant to leave, but they didn't know that so we went into the water fountains, the hot pool, the waterfall area and then the shower ovens. As mentioned before, Tim likes a good scam :)

When we came to leave it was dark, and here we found a problem, having just paid for a normal bike rather than one with headlights, brakes, suspension and a speedo, we had to drive down around at a disadvantage. It was ok though as no one else has lights either, they must be environmentally conscious or something.

This is where the lack of map/phone/GPS scuppered us, we had no idea where to go, but guessed a lot and seemed to find a magic shortcut home which amazed us a lot. So much so, that we decided to go out and celebrate.

We had some noms and then a few beers before settling to watch the Southampton vs Chelsea game. After the first half, the lack of sleep was taking it's toll on Tim so we called it a night. We do have an early start tomorrow again after all so it's probably a good move.