Yesterday we booked another trip and took a 2 hour bus ride southeast of Hanoi to the old city of Ninh Binh (ancient capital); here we went to a famous temple *Ha Lau and then to the Tam Coc caves. The countryside of of Vietnam is constantly evolving and under construction and there are signs upon signs of new developments.. you wonder what Vietnam will look like when all the buildings are finally built.. or if this is the way it will remain.
We met some friends from Ireland (Mom, apparently Black Irish means nothing to the Irish...so that was an awkward convo), a guy from Melbourne, two girls from Canada and others and we were off. The mountains around Ninh Binh seem similar in formation to Ha Long Bay but without the water. It also appears that they are mining all the mountains for limestone (I believe) so one day too, these will be gone.
The temples were very indicative of the temples I saw in China, a.k.a., another budhist shrine, but the Tam Coc caves were a lot of fun.
We took a boat driven by a 15 year old girl who was more interested in talking to the other ladies driving the other boats then our own and couldn't keep a straight course for the live of her. But man, do they have a scam. At the turnaround point, you come up to other ladies in boats selling water, cookies, beer etc. where they want you to buy stuff for yourself but also for your driver.. which we refused because she was probably the worst driver in the world and the rest of our group pretty much was done before we got to the turnaround point.. (Steven also mentioned that the Lonely Planet indicated that you buy a pop for the driver and the girls sell it back to the ladies at the end... point #2 scam), then as you turnaround they want you to buy a souvenier (point #3) and then we were finally off.. totally missing the rest of our group. Then all of the sudden she was switching boats with another lady wanted a tip from us (point #4) and then we were expected to tip the 2nd driver as well (point #5). We were probably the cheapest tippers out there, as they want 100,000 dong ($5) and are expecting it. I gave 10,000 to the first girl and 20,000 to the second. I am sure they were pissed, but so were we.
Everyone was waiting so we frantically got on our bikes and biked to a beautiful pagoda (temple) in a cave. The countryside is beautiful and we then hiked up to a beautiful budhist shrine built into a cave on the side of the mountain. I think Steven could spend this entire trip sourcing out caves.. its been a lot of fun.
Today we are just going to tour Hanoi, and then are catching a flight to Danang. We were going to go to Hue but flights were full, so we just went to the closest city. I think from there we are going to spend 3 days checking out the surrounding area and then are going to fly to Cambodia. and then work our way up from the south to Saigon. It's pretty chilly up in this area so I am looking forward to warmer temps down south!
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