We arrived by sleeper bus at 4am (our first sleeper bus with no issues!), half asleep, at a random hostel in the middle of nowhere, just outside the old capital - Ninh Binh.
Luckily the hostel was open for business, and the owner was a very friendly, helpful man. He arranged for a mini bus to take us, and two other couples, to our hotels.
The first couple arrived at their hotel to find it was closed. It then suddenly dawned on us that we would likely have the same problem!
We were right, our hotel wasn't going to be open until 7:30am, another 3 hours! We weren't sure what to do, so we hoisted our backpacks on, and went lumbering around Ninh Binh. We stumbled across a couple of places, preparing their 'restaurants' of sorts, but unsurprisingly weren't willing to accept customers at this hour. We eventually found an elderly couple selling tea, coffee, sticky rice, and your typical corner shop type goodies, from the front of their house. We sat on little plastic stools, that we've now become accustomed to, and sipped coffee until sun rise. At around 6am, we went to our hotel in the hope of seeing it open, no such luck. Now the sun had risen, there were a few more places open. So we sat down in a place, just two or three doors down from our hotel and ordered tea, which turned out to be absolutely revolting! I didn't want to offend, so I tried my best to sip it away slowly. But after visiting the little boys room, and seeing the colour of the water in the toilet, I couldn't help but see a resemblance, after that I couldn't drink anymore.
We managed to check into our hotel at around 6:30am. The owner was up and sweeping the reception area. Fortunately the place wasn't fully booked, so we were quickly shown to our room. After a quick freshen up we were back out, on a moped to find some breakfast, and search for a place called 'Trang An'.
'Trang An' is about 10km from Ninh Binh and is basically a 'Halong Bay' type landscape on land, with an amazingly blue river flowing in and around incredible karst scenery. This place is also far less visited than the more touristy 'Tam Coc', which is about 7km southwest of Ninh Binh.
We took a very small paddle boat around Trang An, with an older couple, and a girl around the same age travelling on her own. So in total there were 6 of us (including a little Vietnamese lady paddling us along) in a 7-8ft long boat! There was barely an inch between the water and the edge of the boat!
The trip lasted around three and a half hours. We went from being out in the open amongst limestone peaks towering over us, to through tiny little caves almost scrapping our scalps on the stalactites. I loved the scenery, it reminded me of something out of Jurassic park, just without the dinosaurs!
Some of the caves were 250m long and lit by quite a few bulbs. But half way through one of them there was a powercut! We were slowly drifting along in the pitch black, ducking as low as we could to avoid bumping our heads whilst our 'captain' scrambled to find a torch! Once found, the person at the front had to hold the torch and help guide us toward the 'light at the end of the tunnel'.
We stopped off at a few places along the way, to view a few hidden temples, and take in the breathtaking views. I must also say that the weather was fantastic, we were expecting the weather to get worse (wetter and colder) going further north, but it was a gorgeous sunny day, and about 25 degrees celsius. On our way back we noticed that our 'captain' was getting a little tired, even using her feet to row at one point, so me and Amelia grabbed an ore each, and helped her row for the last 45 minutes or so. From that point on we also had singing to accompany us, probably 5-6 women in another boat happily singing along rowing next to us, the only words we recognised from the lyrics were "Ninh Binh, Ninh Binh".
After our boat trip, we hopped back on our moped, and went to 'Hoa Lu' view point for some more spectacular views. The start of our ascent to the view point was fairly easy, just a few hundred step, with an elderly Vietnamese lady in tow. Suddenly the steps stopped, and all that lay ahead were huge sharp limestone boulders. We were ready to turn around and head back down, but the elderly lady prodded us forward and pointed us toward the flags at the peak. After some risky climbing, we made it to the top sweaty and out of breath. We had a full 360 degree panoramic view of the stunning scenery all to ourselves, so we perched on the razor sharp rocks, and took in the views before heading back down to get pestered by the little old lady now trying to sell her luke warm drinks.
After some more looking around temples, and taking pics of some water buffaloes, we hopped back on the moped, to find another view point. This one overlooked 'Tam Coc', and required no rock climbing, but still around 800 steps worth of effort! It paid off. We took some great snaps, and soaked up the surroundings before heading back to our hotel.
For dinner we went to a great bargain priced place (recommended by the hotel) for a 30,000 Dong (£1) dinner each, washed down with a less than 50p beer!

Next morning we caught a bus to Hai Phong and super quick hydrofoil to Cat Ba Island!