Duc Tuan Hotel Ninh Binh

... heure de balade dans une nature magnifique, nous revenons vers le bord juste avant un orage (Alex, j ai cherche les singes sur les falaises mais il faut croire que c etait pas le bon jour :-( ).
Une fois l orage passe, nous repartons pour le village de Keng Ga, un village construit au bord d une riviere ou la pluspart des habitants habitents sur l eau. Sur la route, on traverse des villages isoles et les gens sont tellement serviables pour nous guider, c est extraordinaire ! Arrive sur ...

... bike through this amazing countryside. At times we had light rain we drove through which made it even more magical!!!
Had lunch in a village - really bad greasy fries! They had a big snake in a cage at the front - he was on the menu!.






Ninh Binh, Vietnam hilaryramsey

... rice that had just been harvested - across the roads & in their front yards & straw to make into hay was drying out across the streets & would totally cover sections of the road. Loved riding through the villages & seeing how they lived.


Went to the river where we paid 60,000 Dong each ( $4) to do the ...

... his own petrol at the petrol station! The countryside around Ninh Binh was spectacular and is known as the Halong Bay of the rice fields. We hired a boat around the spectacular Tam Coc, more vertical limestone islands, this time rising from rice fields which are worked by local Vietnamese.

After getting stuck in a water buffalo traffic jam we then scaled one of the limestone islands (lots of steps!) to visit a temple and also ...

... party on at a beach bar/club..... there were more Vietnamese tourists there than Westerners which was cool.... random party..... started with a fashion show... the posters promised a bikini show but there were no bikinis, just ill-fitting clothes! After an hour of that, we had a Blind Date show using 4 westerners, v funny! Then the party started, cheesy dance music on the sandy dance floor with all the guys 'n' gals from the boat trip... fab! I headed home about 2am ...

Ore 9.00, oggi Elisabetta ha uno xe-om (conducente di moto) speciale (il suo maritino Marco). Dopo colazione con una moto noleggiata all'hotel, decidiamo di esplorare parte dell'isola che sino ad ora non avevamo visto. Dapprima ci dirigiamo verso due spiagge e poi prendendo una strada in salita arriviamo a una ex base militare in un punto panoramico da dove si puo' visionare cio' che ci circonda a ...

We arrived in Tam Coc on a Bus tour from Hanoi for a boat trip down a cute little river through some caves. They call Tam Coc the Halong Bay on land..... Again lots of big rocks but different scenery, and very beautiful!

After desciding not to travel back to Hanoi with the rest of the tour we were left in this very small, but at the time very busy town. Little did we know that once the sun set it was a ghost town... All be it a very quaint peicefull town ...

... table cloths) Apart from the hawking of goods, the boat ride was relaxing and serene.

TB: Next they took us to temples and pagodas. The first one had some stairs and the temple was built into the cave. We continued up the stairs and there was a school field trip or something and they would follow us with their camera lenses, for once we were the exotic ones. We had lunch, I had the Pho Bo, beef noodle soup, its their ...

Well the bad news is my camera has broken :( For some reason it refused to switch on,, so I am now get to carry a brick around with me for a couple of months...My mood was enhanced less by the worst bus journey of my life. We had booked berths on an overnighter from Hanoi to Ninh Binh. From the moment we stepped on board the staff on the bus started pushing us around and shouting at us in Vietnamese. Therese had a bunk at the front, and mine was a cramped bunk right at the back on ...

... up of a huge limetone plateau which is slowly receding leaving behind limestone pillars which rise out of the pancake flat rice paddies for miles around. The contrast of jungle clad, craggy grey rocks with horizontally growing trees and goats that surely could only have got there by teleporting with the lime green, watery fields which where empty reflect the blue sky and looming karsts is breathtaking.

The ancient city of Hoa Lu is ...