June 30-July 3rd Vietnam

by - July 03, 2019

On the 30th we went to a local pho restaurant.  It was super good and worth the long wait.  We drove the recommended loop this day.  The first two sites to see were waterfalls.  Upon arrival to each we saw tons of tour buses and decided no waterfall would be worth dealing with that many tourists.  We did stop at another weasel coffee place.  This one was huge, unlike the prior one we visited.  We had some coffee and enjoyed the view.  The loop took a couple hours total.  We ate at Pizza Primavera  for dinner.  It was so good!  We stayed there longer than we planned because of the downpour.  On the 1st we ate at the same pho restaurant.  We packed up and headed out.  We didn’t enjoy the drive this day.  We took the wrong route and we ended up on a very busy road.  We stayed in Bao Loc this night.  On the 2nd we drove from Bao Loc to Cat Tien.  It rained and rained and rained.  We were drenched.  We stayed at a very neat place outside of Cat Tien National Park.  It was a bungalow on stilts.  We unpacked and tried to hang everything up to dry.  We relaxed, pet the dogs, and then had dinner.  She was a really good cook.  On the 3rd we went to Cat Tien National Park.  We paid to enter and then took the boat across the river.  It was a wet day, but it wasn’t raining too bad.  First we came upon a part of the jungle where the floor was covered in ants.  These weren’t the follow in a line sort of ants.  Then when we got deep into the jungle, we realized our ankles and feet were being bitten....by leeches...of all sizes.  We quickly pulled them all off and ran through the trail until the end.  As we picked more leeches off we could see more of them coming towards us.  The ground was covered!  As we were walking back on a paved trail Bart let me know I had a big full one on back of my leg.  We were so grossed out and our wounds wouldn’t stop bleeding from their anticoagulants.  I suppose we were dumb for wearing crocs hiking, but our hiking shoes were still soaked.  We stopped at a restaurant to clean up and to have a couple of beers.  The view overlooking the river was awesome, but the company wasn’t so great.  A Vietnamese lady who worked there talked our ear off.  We explored the local town for a while in the afternoon.  We ate at Sunny View for dinner again.  We stayed another night there.  On the 3rd we packed up after breakfast and  headed to Ho Chi Minh City.  This was the most terrible day of driving we have had.  It rained as soon as we got close to the city.  The traffic was insane!  There were miles of backed up buses and semis.  We spent the last hour weaving in and out of traffic all while being drenched and cold.  The puddles were dirty and so was the water being splashed in our faces from the other bikes.  We were so relieved to finally get to the hotel.  We dropped off our luggage and then took the bikes to Style Motorbikes and returned them.  It was so bittersweet and we were happy we made it trough the entire 1,700 mile trip without getting hurt.  We celebrated with a couple of beers at East West Brewery and then went to Chivago for some delicious wings.
























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