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13 July: Ninh Binh

Having arrived to late the night before we slept late, really late, we woke just after 10h30, showered and headed out to a breakfast of omelets and a baquette. After which we walked to Queens guest house to arrange a room for the night. After looking at the room, with its balcony and spaciousness we accepted and went back to gather our bags. We had to wait an hour before moving in, so checked mail and packed before walking there. The rain had continued for the largest part of the morning with sporadic down pours, we were lucky to miss the largest one's and walked out with only a few drops falling on us.

After settling in we chatted with the hotel owner about places to go and things to do and headed to the market. Along the way walking past a multitude of barber shops or should I rather say chairs, where one has the pleasure of enjoying the view of the river while having your hair or beard cut in the open air, how refreshing. We found the market not to far off and looked for a place to eat, it takes longer than you would think. We found one after criss crossing the market and sat down for a lunch of noodle soup with beef. Trying to find out what is in the soup is more difficult than one would think, just showing them the book with the Vietnamese words doesn't always work as not all of them can read and those selling soup in the market rarely can. We also drank some strange drink with dried or fermented fruits, more tasty than it looks, the colour and texture isn't that appealing.

After lunch we ventured out into the meat market to watch as livestock, turtles, snakes and other creepy crawlies were sold to the locals. Leanne felt it difficult to walk through the market, but within minutes she was even able to watch the snakes in their iron bowl awaiting slaughter. (For a few seconds). From there we headed back into the food market and sat down for a taste of what we thought we ordered - goat spring rolls, this again took longer than we expected To our surprise she dropped a ball of rice noodles on a plate with crispy shavings and spicy sauce, no springrolls! I was able to digest some of it, but in the end we just walked away from it.

One last stop, the fresh market where we purchased two mango's, 8 sour plumbs and 1 kg of ramputans. Returning home we settled in and watched the movie, Alive, which I last saw when I was 10 years old. After the movie we walked through another part of town in search of supper. Unfortunately understanding the signs was more difficult and Leanne was afraid they would serve up one of their specialties of cat or dog. After 10 minutes of not finding anything familiar we went to a restaurant across the road ordering fried rice with chicken and vegetables and goat spring rolls. After dinner we arranged for a motorbike rental and headed off to bed.