Ninh Binh and scooting around

So we rented a scooter, and I got put back to Thailand and Laos, where I was doing the driving and had a passenger princess behind me (this time being André).

We made friends with an english boy, who also joined us in exploring Ninh Binh.

First stop, Mua Cave, where I fell for my first scam!
I didn't know about the parking scams in Ninh Binh, so when there was a woman walking in the middle of the street and showing us that we had to drive to the parking, I didn't question it. We paid the fee of 20k and only walking to the Mua Cave, we realized that it was a scam.
It wasn't that much money, but it was more about that it's not nice being cheated.
In Laos, there were people charging us for the entrance of a cave, but they also gave us torches, so at least they gave us an actual service.

Anyway, we still climbed up the 500 steps to the famous viewpoint. Nice!

Continuing on, we went to the Trang An Boat tour (which was big enough that there are no scams happening there).
The Trang An Boat tour cost 250k. For three hours, the boat took us through the river, through some caves and next to picturesque mountains. Nice!

Some lunch and then we visited the Hoa Lu Ancient Capital. Some complex with temples that we could walk through. The complex itself wasn't that exciting, but the stuff happening was:
A teacher of a school class taking pictures with us and his family (which was somehow also here).
All the school children yelling hello and waving at us.
A lady holding a fish in her bare hands and asking if we want it (we politely declined).
A man repeatedly saying thank you to me and shaking my hands (I was just standing there).
A 10 year old boy talking in fluent english with us, touching Andrés tattoos and asking if he can have it (André: no, they are under my skin).
A kid picking up a orange peel, scream "ewwww!!" and throwing it away again (girl why did you pick it up??).
Nice!

Our last stop was the tallest padoga of asia (Binh Dinh).
It was a huge templeground, that would have been well worth the visit if we had more time. Unfortunately, the time was just enough to visit the Padoga itself.

On our way back, our scooter run out of gas and I picked up a bottle of gas with Bens scooter. The guy we brought it from must have seen that we really needed it, because he raised the price to 60k for 1.5l (1l usually costs around 35k) and did not budge after we tried to haggle. Oh well.

We still made it safely back to Tam Coc. It was 19:30 at this point.
At least we can say we really carpe diemed this day.Läs mer