Today’s weather: Very hot with a 40% probability of a stray thunderstorm.Temperatures ranging from 28c (82f) to 36c (97f).

Up early this morning for a 7am walk round the village with one of the locals who works at the Homestay and speaks English. It’s not a compact village as we see in the UK. It’s a series of houses and plots of land spread over quite a large area. Villagers grow a wide range of crops which include rice, three types of bananas, sugar cane, dragon fruit, papaya, peanuts, pineapple, corn, a sweet potato and mango. Some also keep animals, water buffalo, cows, chicken and ducks.

They used to be able to harvest four crops of rice a year but now they can only harvest one because of a lack of water coming down from the mountains.There is a lot of nice large house being built in the village paid for by young members of the family going to work abroad and sending money home.

Mid-morning travelled to Phong Nha Village Sue and I as pillion passengers on two motorbikes driven by locals, a way for them to earn extra money and Scott on a motorbike he has hired.

From the village we were motored up the river by locals taking in the views of the stunning natural Karst Mountains, until we came to Phong Nha cave. It only had a small entrance but once inside it was spectacular, it opened out into a cavernous cathedral of natural beauty that went on for a very long way.

In the Vietnam war the Ho Chi Minh trail crossed the river at Phong Nha village before continuing down south. The Vietcong constructed pontoons toallow the lorries to cross the river at night when they were less likely to be attacked by American aircraft. In the day the pontoons were kept in the cave,
together with supplies for the war and a hospital. The Americans constantly attacked the cave but because of it small opening failed to have any major effect.

We had planned then to walk up to a second cave, but this meant walking up 520 steps and it was very hot and humid, so we decided not to go. But this caused a bit of an incident, because we had booked to visit the second cave the lady who was in charge of our boat had to go with Scott to explain to the
officials in charge why we would not be visiting the second cave.

Then back to the Farmstay for 4pm to relax and rest for the rest of the evening.