Ninh Binh Tour
For our last full day in Vietnam we had booked a day’s outing to Ninh Binh incorporating Trang An, Bai Dinh and Mua Cave.
We were picked up very early in morning at our hotel and set off in a comfortable mini bus with around 20 other tourists from a number of different countries. Our guide spoke excellent English and was very good at bringing all the passengers together. Our first stop was at the Bai Dinh Temple which is a huge complex of temples, pagodas and corridors connecting them all set in the mountains just outside Ninh Binh. It is a mixture of very old temples and many more areas which are only newly built, in the last 20 years. The complex is huge and we only saw a part of it including the longest corridor is Asia which was lined with 500 stone Arhat statues (equivalent of Christian saints) all carved in different forms. Although it seemed to be that everything was described as the largest or tallest it was still quite an awe-inspiring place.
After a short stop for a substantial buffet lunch we headed to the Trang An Scenic Landscape Complex, which is an incredibly beautiful place with clear rivers, limestone mountains and karsts, caves and many cultural relics. We were rowed through this landscape by one of the women rowers who were certainly very fit to move a rowing boat with six people. It was quite a fantastic journey through all of the different landscapes.
Once we disembarked we headed to our last visit of the day at Mua Cave. The cave below the mountain is not that impressive but the main attraction is the view from the top of the climb up the mountains. There are around 500 stone steps cut into the mountain and the steps split about two thirds of the way up with access to two peaks. We did both peaks and the view from both is quite stunning looking over the mountain and into the valley with its lotus shaped paddy fields. The peak of the lying dragon mountain is a stone dragon which is so popular with tourists that it was impossible to get all the way to the top without what looked like some unnecessary risk of falling so we left the instagrammers to it.
The views were definitely worth the effort but it was quite a strenuous climb especially in the heat and humidity so people should be prepared for this.
We returned to our tour bus and after dropping some of the party, who had booked the two day package to include a trip to HaLong Bay, at a hotel e headed back to Hanoi.
In retrospect given the standard of the tour I would have liked to have done the two day tour but as we were leaving the next evening it was not feasible.
We returned to our hotel in Hanoi, had a welcome shower and then as it was our last full night we headed out to the famous Hanoi Train street. This is a narrow street where twice a day a train runs along it very close to the surrounding buildings. Unsurprisingly this has become a tourist attraction, although with a chequered history of near misses and closures over the years. Today there are many cafes and restaurants lining the street. When we arrived we were approached by a man offering excellent views of the train so we followed him into a small café and upstairs to a balcony overlooking the street. We ordered some drinks and a reasonable egg filled bun and waited. It was quite extraordinary to see a large, goods train running so close to the buildings and certainly worth seeing, if only once.
We found a local banh mi café nearby that served veggie fillings and had some food and drink and headed back to the hotel after a long day.
