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Day four was spent whizzing along the west Ho Chi Minh trail enjoying the views; stopping off for coconuts and visiting waterfalls, pagoda's, war memorials, brick factories and various other little stops along the way. At our overnight stop in Kon Tum we enjoyed an amazing vietnamese barbecue of wild boar, venison and goat to name but a few (I was assured none was dog or cat!), 17 beers and all for the princely sum of £4. Our first stop on day five was to a catholic wooden church and the orphanage attached to it; the Banna tribe in the highlands used to bury the babies with the mother if the mother had died during childbirth, now the nuns take in these children and give them an amazing quality of life. We were lucky enough to get to spend over an hour with the very small kids all of whom we very happy to have a couple of extra human climbing frames! Although it was lovely to see such happy well looked after well educated orphans it was still quite heartbreaking when you looked into the nursery with 80 or so metal cots all lined up in rows, a lovely experience
but a sad one also. From here we made our way through the very green countryside, stopped off for a swim in a river and made our way through the teaming rain towards our final stop in Ksam Duc.
Our last night was spent eating yet more lovely food and drinking too much rice wine and beer with our brilliant driver and guide. When we booked the trip with the easy riders we weren't too sure about spending quite a big chunk of money to drive around the highlands for six days but it has been so cool to be able to sit back and drive through the incredible countryside watching the world go by. Vietnam is an amazing country to do this in, unlike Thailand and Laos, Vietnam has not yet been spoiled by development and tourism and it's just been an awesome part of our trip.
As a note to anyone coming to Vietnam, before we got here i had been told a lot of horror stories about the food but everything we have had has been amazing, sitting on tiny stools on pavements might not look too appealing but the food has been the best
of our trip so far, no need to fear what the Vietnamese have to offer, it rocks!!!
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Chris and Nikki
Chris
Great picture!