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14 July: Ninh Binh

Our time had caught up with us a little due to oversleeping a bit, we ate our breakfast of omelet's and a loooong baguette, before collecting the motorbike and being on our way. This was not an automatic I had grown so accustomed to and I needed to get used to the gears again, not that it took longer than the 100m to the stop street. One thing I'm sure of is when I'm back there will be a new BMW GS650 in my garage, even if its only for Sunday cruises.

We headed to Tam Coc, better known as Halong bay on the rice paddies. It's one of the most scenic places in all of Vietnam, with limestone outcrops popping up everywhere and rising to the sky beyond. We purchased a entry ticket and boat ticket for the two of us and headed out on the small boat. A fascinating thing about the people here is that they row the boat with their feet, lying on their back or resting on their elbows. The heat from the day was intense, but luckily Leanne had remembered the umbrella, hence we melted right in with the other Vietnamese local tourists.

The river snakes between the rocky limestone outcrops for about 4 km. Along the way passing under a bridge, through 3 caves and past a duck farm, with hundreds of ducks passing you on both sides. With only about a km to go to the turn around point, our rower drifted precariously near to oncoming traffic, the next minute we hit them. Thinking it was our fault having held the umbrella in such a way as to obscure her vision, we soon learnt this was not the case, as we were greeted by a newly acquired deckhand. She had jumped aboard during the collision without us even noticing, talk about treading like a cat. We soon learned that our new guest wasn't there only to lighten the paddling load of our rower...

As we entered the third cave, we could see what lay ahead for us and prepared ourselves for the onslaught to follow. A multitude of boats laden with drinks, fruits, sweets and so on were waiting for our arrival. We exited the cave on the other side and our rower motioned as far as possible to the wall of the cave allowing an oncoming vendor to have line of sight with us to sell her items. After 5 minutes of being hounded, she tried her last line, "drink for m'dam", refering to our rower. We had read earlier that you buy them the drink and they immediately sell it back to the vendor at half the price, we didn't fall for it. Our rower showed her disappointment by drifting slowly to a section where drops were streaming off stalactites, they hit me plumly, touché.

We had not gone a km further before our second crew member opened a large metal container behind us and continued to reproduce every type of embroidery thinkable. After finding we weren't going to buy, they turned to the last resort asking a few dollars as a tip. Man, it gets difficult sometimes! We got off and headed to the motorbikes, the trip had been thoroughly enjoyable and the nagging actually made it more amusing.

Collecting the motorbike we drove further along the road through rice paddies broken up only by rivers and limestone outcrops, before arriving at a Bich Dong Pagoda. A temple built into the mountainside surrounded by a small water pond on all sides. Like all Pagodas this one was also littered with Buddha statues in the temple. We stayed there a few minutes more, before taking a back road to Hoa Lu.

The road was terrible, but for its lack of tar and abundance of water filled potholes, it made up with its majestic landscape. The road is nothing more than a glorified farm road with rice paddies on both sides with the occasional small settlement through which one passes. Along the way we spotted a herd of water buffalo wading in the shallows. We stopped the bike and strode over for a photo or two, the one almost touched my hand as I stretched out for it.

Back on the road, we made another stop at one of the rice paddies. We had planned to take some photos of us jotting around like locals harvesting, but the paddies were deeper than we thought. Leanne went halfway up to her knee before removing it, unsure how deep it was. Mine went up to my knees, but unless I wanted to wade around in my undies, my pants would be soaked. We ended up asking a local to take a picture of the both of us standing beside the rice paddy. Back on the bikewe were off again to Hoa Lu, this time climbing onto the number one highway heading for Hanoi. We turned off 6 km later and stopped at the Hoa Lu Citadel.

The citadel was the capital of Vietnam, built in 680 AD by the Dinh Dynasty. The location was a superb strategic site due to it being completely surrounded by limestone outcrops and hence approaching armies could be seen well ahead of time. After strolling around we jumped back on, stopping only at the Hoa Lu Chinese temple, before heading back to Ninh Binh on the highway, now filled with buses and motorcycles scratching past you.

Back in Ninh Binh, we made a stop at the local market looking for lunch, we found the stall we thought we had eaten the previous day, the lady really did look identical. We sat down and both ordered the same as the previous day. The next minute the lady at whom we had previously eaten stormed past, visibly distressed and making it known to all. After giving a few shouts and grunts she retreated back to her stall. We were allowed to eat in relative peace, before returning to the guest house. We collected our bags and paid our dews to the owner, first joking with him that we had fallen with the bike and that there was massive damage, he took it well. Bags in hand we walked all the way to the station, a total of 15m!

We only had to wait 20 minutes before we were called and boarded the train. This time we got our park bench seats, with the open windows. Two girls sat in front of us, both studying at Saigon University, they were also heading to Hanoi and could speak a little English. We spent the first hour looking out the window, saw the sun set in a great red ball of fire!! After dark, I had my head stuck in a book, while Leanne tried to sleep. The 3 hours passed so quickly, we were surprised when told we were in Hanoi, I almost thought there were another 1 &frac12; hours left of the journey.

We didn't waste any time and got a motorcycle taxi within 2 minutes to take us to a hotel, adjacent to the one we wanted to go. If they drop you off at a hotel, they usually wait around and get given commission, increasing your accommodation costs. The first hotel we walked into had reasonable rooms, small with not the best bathroom, but at least we had aircon. The idea was just to settle down after a long day, rather than walk around looking for other accommodation. We dropped the bags and headed out the street looking for food, it didn't take long, just around the corner was a street stall where we bought some soup. After dinner we walked further to get a general idea of our part of the city, stopping along the way at a type of small supermarket where we were able to buy yogurt, cereal (yes, eventually we found some), milk and a ice cream, yeh! After this it was back home for an early evening.