I was still awake in the early hours of Saturday morning, 14th August, as I had a dodgy stomach from eating too much gluten or dairy, or both, last night. Before I’d fallen asleep I had spoken to Captain Caveman who had imparted on to me another rule to consider when leaving Phong Nha. Legally, only people of the same household or family are allowed to travel in a car together, or all passengers must have plane tickets for the same flight, as of today – well that meant I’d definitely be travelling alone (it would be unlikely that anyone in this area would be flying to Turkey any time soon) which would be expensive. He’d even shown me where to find the official document, I believed him!
I had bananas for my breakfast and caught up on the news where I read a very worrying report about the possibility of the virus being able to spread between the apartments of a building, if this is proven to be true then the cities are doomed:
https://vietnamlife.tuoitrenews.vn/news/vietnam-life-vietq/20210813/can-covid19-spread-through-apartment-building-ventilation-systems/62561.html
Captain Caveman ended up sorting gear with Watto at the Glass House for most of the morning, I had a second breakfast because I got peckish, of a croissant. When Captain Caveman got home he had some fantastic news; Watto had told Captain Caveman he could have his motorbike after he leaves which was so kind and a real help for getting to work and back. We had some of the veggie soup for lunch with some Lake House bread and it was very nice and felt healthy. I’d still not actually got my passport back yet, but Bich had it and had forgot to drop it off so we arranged to go to collect it at the Phong Nha Farmstay – I really wanted to know what date it had been extended to and if it had an XC written on to denote it being my last one.
We arrived at the Farmstay for Happy Hour and had a couple of beers while watching the sunset, the fields were full of cows, buffalo and farmers – it looked really beautiful. Bich came over with the passport and when I checked, it was a normal stamp, just like all the others, up until 9th September. So, that was my deadline – I would leave Vietnam on or before that date.
Back home we had another great vegetarian meal of mushrooms, onions, garlic and a tomato based sauce with spaghetti. With all the faffing about with the passport we still hadn’t had the chance to pop over to Stu’s to pick up the meat he’d smoked for us, we would go tomorrow.
joloyolo 