Huong Khe to Dong Le

Saturday November 11, 2017, 33 miles (53 km) - Total so far: 1,718 miles

(2,765 km)

The HCM highway started out much as yesterday....a little bit boring. As we were heading to Dong Le, we turned off at route 15, which is far more scenic! Maybe the HCM is scenic from the junction as well. The weather wasn't great so we didn't have amazing views, but it was nice to be back in the hills again. We passed lots of logging - cheery hellos from the workers.

Things took a downward turn when we passed through a village that had just released the children from school. Lots of shouting that felt more like heckling but, whatever.....a few follwed us on bikes - again, nothing new. But a couple of girls on a scooter just wouldn't leave us alone. I am not sure how long they were with us for, but they were definitely trying to unsettle us. They'd ride next to one of us, staring and saying things we obviously couldn't understand. I guess they probably thought it was funny, but we didn't enjoy it much!

Things didn't get much easier when we arrived in Dong Le, as apparently we are a serious novelty here! However, we checked into the Thuong Mai guesthouse, which has large rooms for 220,000 dong. Very clean too. We then managed to buy some delicious food on the street, and the lady who served us looked like we'd literally made her day by choosing her stall. We then did a bit of a loop to buy provisions at various small shops, and were actually followed by one guy. I think he was just curious! Everyone was pointing and shouting and talking about us.....fine, but I guess the earlier incident meat we were more sensitive than usual.

We didn't see any any obvious restaurants, but hopefully we'll find somewhere for dinner.

Quite looking forward to blending in with the other foreigners in Phong Nha!