Ninh Binh

 The next town I stayed in was Tam Coc, a small suburb of Ninh Binh. It’s a cute little tourist town in the middle of rice fields with a few rivers and some big limestone outcrop mountains. 













I stayed in a cute little bungalow there at a family’s house. Every morning they made me coffee and an omelette and fresh fruit for breakfast. 


The first day I was really tired from the scary bus ride over so I mostly rested and got my nails done and got a massage. While there I met another American girl, Sarah, who was really cool and I ended up spending the next few days with.


The first morning I got up early and walked about a mile to a nearby temple built into a limestone rock called bich dong pagoda. The walk there was really beautiful through rice paddies. I saw lots of goats and farmers working in the area. 


At the pagoda I climbed the 200 steps carved into the limestone to the top and had such a beautiful view. It was a really neat place and I enjoyed the walk a lot. 


Next I went back to my homestay and got a bike and Sarah and I met up and biked to Mua. It’s another even larger limestone outcrop that has a huge dragon at the top. There are a lot of tourists there, but the view was incredible so it makes sense that there were. At the very top with the dragon it was really difficult to walk with the jagged limestones and the  roads of people. It was a little treacherous, but we made it okay. 


Next we biked a few more miles to Trang An, where we intended to take a boat ride. What we didn’t realize was that it was 3 hours though, and that would mean we would finish after dark and have to bike 8km back in the pitch dark. We decided to wait until morning. We met a Korean guy, Yong, there who did the same thing and we got dinner together discussing life and travel over good food. 


In the evening I booked my next trip to do a motorbike tour through the country for a few days, and got my plans settled for that. 


In the morning Sarah and I went and took the boat ride. Somehow we took the wrong boat and it was only an hour and a half instead of 3 hours, but it was still really nice tour. It is through the area where King Kong was filmed. It was really beautiful. The tour takes you through caves and around rocks and it was a really lovely ride. We were with a French-Swiss guy and his Vietnamese tour guide as well so we got some benefits of the tour guide knowing things. I’m not sure if it’s because of my high school classes or my understanding of Portuguese (both are quite old now), but I actually understand a lot of French. There are many French travelers here and I have found that I understand maybe 65% of what they are saying to each other. Which I think is pretty impressive considering I only took French classes in high school and didn’t feel very proficient and it’s been over 10 years and my Portuguese is also old and out of practice. I dont feel like I can say anything in French, but I do seem to understand a lot. It’s really cool, at first I was like “wow I just understand French it must be cause it’s similar to English” and then I asked Sarah if she also understood what they were saying and she was like “um no? I don’t speak French” lol. Anyway, I guess it’s in the recesses of my mind somewhere and now I need to go somewhere French speaking to make it actually good. 

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