Bike ride from Hue to Hoi An via Van Hai Pass

Van Hai Pass - (Vietmanese for "ocean cloud pass") is an approximately 21 km long and 1627ft high mountain pass that traverses a spur of the larger Annamite Range that juts into the South China Sea. 

We needed to get down to Hoi An from Hue (140k) so what easier/better way than to travel most of the way by bike. We arranged a day trip with a local travel company called Phat Tire to support the ride which included an 80k bike ride starting in Hue and ending in Danang, which is just north of Hoi An.  The ride was very scenic, crossing rice fields in their prime for harvest season, coastlines and fishing villages.

The last part of the ride included a 10k climb up Van Hai Pass and a 10k descent.  It was a beautiful coastal road that climbed into the clouds from sea level.  Overall it was a great day on the bike...what better way to travel between cities.  Props to Kerry for sticking it out and hanging tough in th heat and hills!

Phong Nha and Paradise Caves

Phong Nha Cave is very famous in Vietnam. It is 7,729 metres long and contains 14 grottoes, as well as a 13,969 metre underground river and can only be accessed by boat. Which we did and was very cool. They shut off the engine and oar through it so it's very quiet, dark and creepy. It's large carverns and huge limestone stalactites and stalagmites are quite impressive! 

Cave entrance: 

Pictures of course don't do it justice but here's an examples of the inside: 

We had the morning free before going to see Paradise Cave so we rented a motorbike and road around the Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park, which surrounds the caves we came to see. In fact, the park is is composed of 300 caves and grottos, including Son Doong Cave - just discovered in 2009 and is the largest cave in the world! I digress, the park itself is also very beautiful as are the farms and rice fields we went through after. 

 

Our coffee stop:

Paradise Cave - 524 steps to mouth, 3rd largest in world, 31km long, stretches into Laos, 250-400 million years old, and includes a massive cavern. It was discovered in 2005 and opened to the public in 2011. It is known as the "World's Most Beautiful Cave" at least according to our tour guides :) We both had to admit that it was pretty damn spectacular! Photos don't do it justice but here are some to try: 

Vang Vieng, Laos

In the mountains and karsts of Laos lies a small town called Vang Vieng, known for good kayaking, tubing and rock climbing.  Being low season the river levels weren't high enough for exciting whitewater so we opted for some rock climbing instead.   The area was gorgeous with sharp peaks shooting straight up hundreds of meters.   They do hot air ballooning around the area too, which we had planned, but decided not to because a level of haze rolled in the night before and it wouldn't have been as pretty. 

The rock climbing was a blast, although my arms felt the brunt of the hard work that afternoon.  Even tying my shoes was a bit of chore the next day (maybe I need some more upper body training...)

We spent the rest of the day dodging the water fights around town from Songkran and relaxing on the river.  Below are some pictures from the day.

Songkran - Buddhist (Thailand/Laos/Cambodia) New Year

Like our modern calendar has Christian origins, the Buddhist religion operates on it's own/different calendar. The New Year falls mid-April, we've noticed each country celebrates slightly different dates. With the new year of course comes cleansing. Traditionally, everyone cleans their houses, we noticed some monks in white as opposed to their typical orange, obviously lots of offerings at temples, and I'm sure many more traditions than we even caught on to. It's also a big family time - it seemed that lots of people traveled out of the cities back to hometowns. It kind of reminds me of Christmas but celebrated over Spring Break (week long, hotter weather, little party mixed in). Lots of families were dressed in matching shirts and eating/drinking together ALL day long. 

But the biggest part of Songkran is getting drenched! So the tradition started out as a sprinkling of water (I'm assuming originating from a monk) over family members, again as a symbol as cleansing. That has turned into utter chaos on the streets! On the street in front of those families eating are the kids and teens/young adults with a baby pool or trash can sized containers full of water, with hoses, massive squirt guns and full on buckets just drenching EVERYONE that passes by - walking, riding bikes/motorbikes, cars, buses, taxies tuk-tuks...everyone. And not nicelymind you. Usually as ferociously as possible - bucket in the face, slow pour down the back if you're unlucky enough to be caught in traffic, etc. At first, I was convinced we were getting it worse because we were foreigners but I witnessed fair treatment to everyone I saw. 

We heard all about it in Thailand, particularly Chiang Mai where I think may be the largest celebration. They go so far as to make sure all the water is properly iced before throwing to make sure it's extra shocking. But we had moved on to Laos by the time the celebrations began - 4 days BEFORE the official new year started. We had a nice welcome as soon as we crossed the border while on a tuk-tuk (which has no walls) with all our stuff, a little girl just creamed us and screamed "Happy Lao New Year" right after. It was almost non-stop after. We strategically walked down certain streets to avoid the bucket dump but there was no avoiding the kids with squirt guns. 

The celebrations escalated the entire time we've been in the country with people on the side of streets in Luang Prabang, to that plus truck beds full of kids riding around drenching people in Vang Vieng to serious full-on, city-stopping partying across the streets of Vientiane. I forgot to mention that along with each water dumping spots and trucks was massively LOUD music, mostly techno. I've seriously never seen anything like what we saw last night In Vientiane. Full structures set up with strobing neon lights. Teenagers in the roads with whistles jumping in front of and stopping cars and motorbikes to drench them. Music and chaos everywhere. It was pretty insane. 

I have to say I learned one thing this week - I'm officially old. All this getting drenched did not amuse me. Scott handled it with a laugh and I tried, I really did, but mostly I just wanted to rip the head off of anyone that drenched me. I would have probably had a lot more fun had we just stopped for a day, bought our own weapons (water guns), drank the day away getting wet and throwing our own water. But unfortunately Scott and I both got pretty sick for a day each about 2 days apart so that didn't help the mood. Plus, we were trying to sightsee and travel during the holiday - not smart nor recommended. So I was usually trying to get somewhere so it was annoying to get water thrown straight in my face. The worse was on our way out of Vang Vieng on the last day of the celebration. We were picked up by a minibus that would take us to the bus station. First we had to go all over town to pick up everyone else going to the bus station. When we had about 9 people on the bus, some kids danced into the middle of the street forcing the driver to stop, they then drenched the driver just pouring water all over him. THEN they got ON the bus and threw a bucket over ALL of us and all of our stuff. Soaked for a 3 hour ride. Oh yea, because of all the mayhem on the streets the whole way down, that 3 hour ride turned into a 6 hour ride but thankfully we had air conditioning and could keep the windows shut! 

So it was interesting and somewhat fun to witness this holiday but if there is ever a next time, I'm going to plan to stay put and enjoy from one location. And definitely get drunk - that would have helped too :) 

Obviously we couldn't really take photos since we didn't want to risk the electronics but I got a few shots from the bus last night while we were stuck in traffic of two truck beds just drenching each other and some kids waiting for their next victims: 

 Those little bags you see littering the street were makeshift water balloons.

Luang Prabang

Sorry for the delay! Catching up! 

We got off the slow boat at Luang Prabang, Laos. When Laos was a colony of France, the French had a huge influence in Luang Prabang since it was the capital of the time. So the very small city (more like large town) is visually interesting with Buddhist Temples next to French inspired architecture and bakeries galore. Thailand doesn't really do bakeries or bread for that matter so we were excited for the change up! Not to mention some sweet treats: 

Speaking of food, we had our absolute favorite soup here at the Night Market in the center of town on a street corner. It was spicey minced pork with noodles, who-knows-what seasoning and then add your own greens and chillis. We are here twice! 

The second night we planned on eating in this alleyway we found where for 10,000 kip (little over $1, even in Laos very cheap) you get a bowl and can help yourself buffet style to anything on the table which included all sorts of meats, veggies, broth, etc... 

...even chicken head if your heart desires: 

We went back to the soup instead so unfortunately I cannot vouch for that one! 

The main part of town was very cute, with colonial-style buildings intermixed. These pictures really don't do it just but you get the idea: 

We walked around town out first day. It rained in the morning so the town was very quiet. Scott didn't take a lot of photos with the phone so here is just one of the oldest active temple in town, popular for it's very large funeral cart in a side building as well as mosaic displaying Ramayana on a red well which was pretty cool. More pictures when we upload the camera photos 

Oh yea, and we have one of Scott having a little fun - please forgive the lack of respect towards the Buddha. 

A sacred tradition in all Buddhist cultures, but particularly strong in Luang Prabang, in the Alms Giving Ceremony. This takes place every morning - all monks from all the temples around the city link for a procession down the Main Street of town at sunrise. The people kneel and offer sticky rice, sweet treats and other small food to the monks as they pass by, giving blessings in return. It's a very quiet, reverent process (ruined only by us tourists taking photos, but we kept our distance and tried to show respect!) Thisnparticular procession was the first official day of Songkran (the new year) which is why there is a market set up behind them and I think was a larger procession than what is typical. 

We also visited a very beautiful waterfall outside of town (I'll add the name later). We almost went trekking and biking riding instead of this since Scott is not very impressed with any waterfalls since seeing Iquzu Falls at eh border of Brazil and Argentina on our last big trip. But at the last minute we got some good advice to go and I'm so glad we did - it was truly beautiful. This one was especially interesting because it was a vertical series of falls with small pools at the bottom if each one that were deeper than expected and an amazing light blue color.  There were some places were several small pools "stepped down" one after the other. At the too, the stream was calm and they had built a small fence (wouldn't have trusted my life to it or anything!) that allowed us to wade into the stream and essentially look down over the top fall. We also found one of the pools about half way down to swim in that also allowed us to safely go right up to the edge and peer over. Oh yea, we weren't really supposed to swim there hit we took the lead from some teenage monks and figured it would be fine :) 

Also at the same park as the waterfall was a best rehabilitation center. These folks have rescued bears from poachers and have built a habitat for them to get healthy and grow happy. They were very playful and cute as you can see with this one playing with a stick in the water: 

Luang Prabang's "city center" has a somewhat random talll hill almost right at the center. It of course has a small temple on top, with a lot of Buddha statues on the way up and interestingly a Buddha Footprint (we need to find out more on that and report back - although definitely a rock with indentations in the shape of a footprint, it would be a very Large footprint so were not quite sure history of it). Most importantly [to us] it's a GREAT place to watch the sunset: 

We didn't get to spend a lot of time in Laos but Luang Prabang was probably our favorite of the few places we got to see. :) 

Bike around Vientiane

We had one day in the capital of Laos, Vientiane, before we left for Hanoi so we rented bikes and cruised around the city.  It was the first day after Songkran (Buddhist New Year 3 day holiday) so everything was pretty quiet around town.  

This was in stark contrast to the water parties that were raging all over the city last night when we arrived. It was bumper to bumper traffic with people spraying water everywhere and dancing in the streets to blarring music.  Complete pandemonium!  Today....not so much (ironically is was super hot again so the water would have felt great)

The Laotian version of the Arc de Triumph (celebrating is independence from France).  It was built from concrete donated by the US for a new runway at the airport..Some random pics from around town