Tag: Ninh Bình Province

Day 8:

After a wonderful breakfast and send off from our Homestay family we headed off on Groot and Rambo to explore the Tràng An area. 

• Trang An Boat Tour- A wonderful 2.5 hour row boat tour through caves, past temples and near where King Kong – Skull Island was filmed. The scenery was beautiful and our rower was very sweet. She didn’t ask for a tip (unlike the pushy and rude boat operators in Tam Coc), and she passed other boats to allow us to get great pictures without other boats. There are two options for the tour, route 1 or route 2. Route 1 was mostly caves, which we thought could get repetitive, so we opted for route 2 which had fewer caves, more temples and one of the the sites where King Kong Skull Island was filmed. Definitely recommend this tour.

• Lunch of Pho at Tràng An. Very decent Pho for 30,000 dong each. 
• Hoa Lu Ancient Capital. We didn’t spend much time here, but we did enjoy seeing the water buffalo. 
• Bai Đinh Pagoda. We enjoyed our hour spent at the Bai Đính Complex. An electric car will take you to the entrance where you are greeted by a large bronze Buddha. Following this are the beautiful 500 Arahat statues carved from stone and the impressive bell tower. We walked up the stone steps to the Buddha to enjoy a lovely view over the complex before walking back to the parking lot 1.3 km away. 

• Thung Nham bird garden. A beautiful bird sanctuary and a scenic drive to get there. We were told to go late afternoon, but this landed up being poor advice if you want to explore everything the park has to offer. For 100,000 dong all we had time to see were the birds and we walked back to the parking lot at dusk. It was dark by the time we left the park. I would go at 3:30 – 4:00 pm if you want time to explore the park (caves, ancient trees) as well as the birds. 

Dinner at Orchid Restaurant in Tam Coc. We enjoyed the lively patio under a canopy of lit trees. The food was good and the prices very competitive. 

Day 9:

After getting little exercise the past week, we decided to explore Tam Coc by bicycle. We rented bicycles at our homestay and headed off to Bích Động Pagoda. 

• Bích Động Pagoda. I enjoyed this free attraction (we paid the 10,000 dong to park the bicycles). The cave behind the pagoda was interesting to see, and there is a nice viewpoint up the path around the right of the little lake. 

• Hang Mua. Like most travellers we found the cave to be less than exciting. However we enjoyed the stairs up to the incredible viewpoint. You can see the boats below from the river boat tour. 

• Thai  Vi Temple. Given the poor reviews, we opted not to see this temple. We enjoyed the temples on our boat tour and decided that would do. 

We had planned to motorcycle to Cuc Phuong National Park tomorrow to see the primates, check out the floating village and do some hiking. However after seeing the poor reviews for the floating village and being horribly discouraged by monkey island, we have decided to use this time to motorcycle to Laos. Although Laos wasn’t part of the plan – plans were meant to be broken! We have the blue cards for the motorcycles, and we have heard Laos is incredible, so why not! The border crossing might be interesting, but interesting usually means a good story to tell. Will check in and let you know how it goes! 

Lunch was at Chookies Beer Garden. Very good western and Vietnamese options – burgers, falafel, spring rolls. The spinach smoothie was incredible! 

Off to figure out how to get to Laos!