Day 22- A Jungle Adventure

How I imagine the thought process of a person with a suitable sense of self preservation would have gone:

• Is that a rapid I hear? Cool, maybe I should go down and have a look.
• Oh dear, the bush is impenetrable, maybe there will be a good view of the river somewhere else.

How my thoughts progressed:

• Is that a rapid I hear? Aha, let's go swimming!
• Oh dear the bush is impenetrable. Oh well.
• Here is the river at last, this cool water will soothe these bites and scratches.
• This calm eddy would be a good spot, but I'm scared there will be a snake waiting at the bank, so I'll just jump straight into the rapid instead.
• Look how far I've come! Good job I know to go feet first or that submerged tree would've really hurt.
• This is fantastic, this is beautiful, I've never been so free and happy.
• Hang on, I'm now on the opposite side of the rapids to where I began, with nothing to my person but a pair of shorts and some trainers. This jungle suddenly seems quite remote and wild.

And so I fancied myself a proper explorer as I crawled half a mile upstream to where the river was wider, then waded through the waist deep torrent. Several times I lost my balance, and thought I was surely going to be swept back to where I started, only to catch myself with some combination of luck and adrenaline. Reaching the other bank, I felt quite satisfied that I'd found something more exhilarating than the 'dark cave zip line' for which I would've paid half a million dong. 

This was only one part of an incredible day out in Ke Bang national park, that began on a bicycle at dawn, and with a delicious roadside breakfast of rice and corn and peanuts in a cracker sandwich. I took several other dips to soothe the sunburn (I lost my sun cream in Mongolia) and visited the most impressive caves I've ever seen with a Vietnamese girl who confirmed that snake eating is genuinely a thing (I signed myself up to a snake eating tour in Hanoi but thankfully nobody else did, so it didn't run). 

I was very pleased with myself on the way back to Dong Hoi, on a public bus with around 20 seats but at least 30 people. By forcing myself to resist the organised tours, I'd seen the park for about a third of the price, and had a whole lot more fun. I finished off the day with the best meal I've had so far- shellfish cooked in lemongrass, chilli and pineapple. I ate it sitting at the beach, watching a storm pass over the sea, and trying to comprehend that this was my first glimpse of the Pacific, that I had well and truly crossed a continent.