KIDNAPPED in Phong Nha For Siteseeing With New Friends

Waking up in breakfast in Phong Nha and getting all geared up to roll out to head closer to the DMZ, I went downstairs in my hotel to get some breakfast. After such a huge day yesterday, I was famished! Upon ordering, a woman walks up to me and knows right away I'm from San Francisco (by the way I speak)! Her name was Lihn and she was making her yearly visit with her husband to Vietnam to visit family and distribute aid to poor rural communities, schools and orphanages she collects through a non-profit she runs in her spare time ****ADD LINK****. She stopped me and basically told me that I was welcome/invited to come travel with her and her family!

This turned into one of the most pleasant and hilarious days as I traveled around with Lihn and Huong and their family and friends. Had I not met them, I would have not known that Phong Nha, which I rode into in the dark, is actually a world heritage site and contains some spectacular caves! The family loaded my bike in the mini-bus they chartered for their trip and off we went to the caves! Splendid splendid caves and excellent light displays--one cave at the top of 450 TALL stairs that we all mountaineered up and one in a cave under the mountain reachable by boat! AND, unlike Kong Lor, the boats used no motors and paddled the boat like a giant gondola through the cave! WOW, what a great experience!!!

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Afterwards, we had some lunch and head out southward. They said they'd take me as far as I like and just give them the word when I wanted to jump out. We drove through the DMZ visiting a few places along the way and I decided, due to the time and how much I was enjoying myself spending time with their family, to travel with them to their final destination of the evening, Hue. This saved me three days of riding!

I am sooooooo thankful to my new friends for all the good times and the endless good humor and cheer they shared with me! And I'm so very grateful to Lihn and Huang especially for answering my many thousands of questions I had been storing up since entering the country!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!