The Long Hotel Ninh Binh

... Pa.
Le lendemain, il fait beau et nous nous levons de bonne heure pour louer une moto et partir visiter les sites des environs.
Nous commencons par la reserve naturelle de Van Long ou nous nous baladons sur l eau, pousse par une petite dame sur une barque. On est fin seuls, c est extraordinaire. L eau est un mirroir et les pics de calcaire surgissent ici et la comme a Halong Bay. D ailleurs Ninh Binh a recu le nom d Halong Bay des rizieres et c est bien comprehensible. Apres plus d ...

... if we could ride the motorbikes & they happily obliged & sat behind us.


The let us drive for the rest of the day along the roads & through villages & only asking us to swap if the road/track got bad. It was sooo much fun & just loved driving ...

... of the rice fields, houses are built adjoining them & some homes even utilised the adjoining caves where possible. This area is called the "inland Halong Bay". The villages are all built of stone with stone walls & winding little alleys with children playing, chickens & ducks & dogs. Everywhere people were drying ...

... Paul and a motorbike and driver for me. The day was one of our most memorable in Vietnam so far. My driver, Mr. Hai, took such good care of both me and Paul, driving nice and slowly and constantly making sure Paul didn’t lag too far behind. Mr Hai took us around some of the back roads and villages and made sure we saw a real slice of Vietnamese country life. We knew we’d found one of the good guys and Mr Hai even paid ...

... I hung out with a couple of English girls, Sarah and Louisa... at the last stop they indulged in some parasailing together and almost drowned when the boat let them drop into the water under the parasail and they were stuck under water for a while.... this trip so far has made my fear of water worse not better!!
That night, due to a booking issue, had to change accomodation from the hostel into a nearby hotel.... then... had a fab night out...
There was a ...

... paesaggi. Uno spettacolo d'acqua in cui si riflettevano alte rocce sparse qua e la, migliaia di barchette di pescatori che remavano con i piedi o utilizzando piccole palette di legno... che spettacolo indescrivibile. siamo stanchi e un bel po' arrossati dal sole, ma ci riposeremo dopo cena. Alle 22.00 con un pulman viaggiando di notte partiremo da Ninh bin per raggiungere la citta' di Hue domani mattina.

... a thing. Our driver started the 4km walk to get help. after about 45minutes 4guys and our driver return with a couple of small saws and a chainsaw. When seeing the size of the tree and the size of the equipment we both thought we would be stuck for hours... Nope it was down and moved within 1hr!!! Amazing how quickly you can get stuff done with out stupid health and safety regulations/Law!! :-D

That evening we took a night bus to Hoi An!.....

... we went through several caves cut through the rock by the river. The river was surrounded by rice paddies and some small stone homes built against the rock. At the end of the last cave, a rowboat full of cold drinks and snacks comes up and the woman guilts you into buying drinks for your rower guides. On the way back the woman on the boat took a break from rowing to show Traci all sorts of goods she had made (doilies and ...

... to a)collapse, b)bite someones head off or c) get myself run over. By 10am I felt much, much better.

I rented a bike, a proper one with gears and everything which made a nice change and went looking for the two main sights around the town. The first is Hoa Lu which is another ancient city which is being restored from ruins. What makes this one different is the surrounding landscape. From here right up to China, the landscape is ...