Beautiful scenery in this rarely visited part of Vietnam

Our fancy hotel room is supposed to be "breakfast included". But of course nowhere does it say exactly what you'll get for breakfast. 

There were no guests in the dining room when we went down about 8:30am. As I mentioned yesterday, the place is very quiet. But there are a lot of staff around, and they are all very pleasant and cheerful.

But we have only met the one girl at reception who speaks half decent English. The rest of them are very basic. Which, don't get me wrong... we are in a non touristy area of a foreign country and we don't expect them to speak English. 

Anyhow, we understood from the girl in the restaurant that there was no buffet. Which makes sense given the lack of guests. But that they would make us either some kind of noodle soup, or eggs with bread. We chose the eggs, but of course Ruth can't have the bread, so she declined that, but we think the girl thought no bread for ether of us because it never showed up. And even when I asked for it after the eggs arrived, the bread never did.

So we got a small glass of fresh squeezed orange juice... and two fried eggs on a plate. And that was it... not fruit or anything accompanying the eggs. So, not much of a breakfast. Maybe this morning we'll try the noodle soup!

We were waiting for the drizzle to stop, then headed out for a walk to an indigenous village almost 8 kms (5 miles) away. We had to walk on the road, but there was very little traffic.

The locals are all so friendly and smiling.

We notice that the people here don't mind at all having their photo taken. As soon as you aim the phone their way, they break into a big smile.

The cemetery.

Scenery along the way.

Cemetery.

Another part of the cemetery. For the poorer people?

We are pretty sure this is tea that they are growing.

Everything is so green!

Such a beautiful area.

Unfortunately we haven't seen any sunshine yet.

Can't wait to get into the national park.

Another smiling local, with his Asian buffalos.

Almost everybody waves or says hello to us. Even people riding by on motorcycles. 

More beautiful scenery.

We finally made it to the ethnic village of Yen Khe.

One guy stopped us and said hello (as they all do), but this time he actually said "how are you?" as well. But that's where his English ended. He continued trying to communicate though, and we motioned to him that we were looking for some food. He stopped a guy riding by on a motorbike, and told us to hop on the back!

We could have easily walked, but this guy took us to a little pho restaurant. A very basic place with a couple of plastic chairs. A young guy went right to work preparing us some food. There were no other customers. But quite a few people gathered outside peeking in at the strangers.

Big bowl of pho for lunch.

The guy who had sent us off on the motorcycle arrived, and sat down at our table. I guess he just wanted to watch us eat. It was a bit odd, but whatever. Then when we got up to leave, he wanted to pay the bill! We wouldn't let him, and we managed to pay the 80,000 dong ($3.30 USD, $4.40 CAD) total for the two of us.

This guy was selling some kind of dumplings from the back of his motorcycle.

He even had a fire going under the pot on the left side!

This sign shows animals that exist in the national park.

But the writing is for the locals... it says that you are not allowed to hunt or capture or harass any of these species.

You'll notice a tiger on the sign. There hasn't been a photograph of a tiger recorded in Pu Mat National Park since 1999, however there have been several visual sightings. 

We ended up doing just over 16 kms (10 miles).

Today, we hope to get on a rental scooter to go up into the national park, but it's spitting with rain again this morning. Supposed to clear this afternoon, so we'll see.

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