Ninh Binh and Mai Chau (ninh binh 1)

The bus ride from ha long bay to ninh binh was 4 hours of pure mysery, it was so bumpy and the driver was being very erratic. Luckily when we arrived at the hotel it had just the thing to make everything ok again... a pool!! We had a grest evening swimming, drinking beers and eating yummy fried rice and spring rolls :).

We easily couldve spent the whole next day just laying about at the pool but we only had one day in nahn binh so we ended up deciding it would be more productive to do a tour. The tour took us to the Lying Dragon Mountain, canoeing on the trang an river and to check out some temples. We did the dragon mountain first because you need to walk up quite a lot of really steep steps and if we tried to do it in the middle of the day we wouldve been killed by the heat, even as it was we were still sweating profusely by the time we finished. The canoeing was super cool, we cruised through caves and into amazing valleys surrounded by tall, steep, lush mountains. We also canoed past the set where they filmed the new king kong movie which was so sick. They had a bunch of teepees built and statues of indigenous river people fishing and foraging on the banks, it was like we were floating through an acient civilisation.

After Ninh Binh we were off to Mai Chau. The hotel there had an even better pool which overlooked some rice fields. We spent a good amount time relaxing around the pool but also went for a very long bike ride. We rode around through small villages and rice farms, it was such a good ride with so many amazing views, it felt like we were riding in a scene from the secret life of walter mitty. This might end up being the highlight of Vietnam for me, i loved it.

We also checked out a cave in mai chau that was a lot smaller and tunnely than the rest weve seen. They use kids as the guides because some of the holes you need to fit through are proper small. Hopefully this trend of smaller caves the further south you go continues and i get to try some real claustrophobic caving coz i love those videos ahah.Læs mere