Up early this morning to get ready for the short hike. Today is a 6K hike to the falls on the Dong Nei River. Julie staggered to the shower room and was greeted by a small tree frog in the corner by the toilet. After making friends with the frog, she glanced at the mirror over the sink to find a leech looking back at her. I pulled the leech off the mirror, threw it into the toilet and hit the flush handle thinking we would be ride of the little pest. Once the flush cycle ended we opened the lit to find that leech as doing just fine clinging to the side of the porcelain bowl. We tried a second time to flush it away with the same results. Finally we coaxed it onto a stick and move it to a garbage can outside.
After a breakfast of Pork and noodles and tea, we headed for our romp through the jungle to the river. We walked through the grounds of a newly opened hotel on the river bank, and when we asked about it, our guide told us that the original building was a Viet Cong hospital during the war. This made some sense out of the lodge we were staying at because the overall area included a Buddhist temple, what looked like a machine shop, a building that looked like and administration area and several bungalows in various configurations. The whole area looked like it could have been a small army base in the past. Asking our guide about this all we got was a “it might have been something like that” answer. Since they are trying to build up the tourist traffic in this area, it was explained that the people running the lodge today are reluctant to discuss much of the past activities that took place in the “American War” as they refer to the conflict of the 1960’s.
The hike today was short and not too strenuous. We returned back to the lodge, showered, had lunch and headed for our bus for our ride back to the ship.
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