We decided that we wanted to try and start avoiding the 'typical tourist trail' which most people follow down Vietnam so after our (slightly more comfortable) night sleeper train back to Hanoi (getting us into Hanoi at 4:30am....not impressed :) ) we got onto a train to Ninh Binh which Lonely Planet advised to be a nice rural stopoff between Hanoi and Hue...
Arrival in Ninh Binh included the usual hotel touts but we decided to go on to a hotel we had read about on trip advisor, probably one of the loveliest hotels we have ever stayed in! Such friendly people and a great atmosphere with smiley people...En route to the hotel we encountered a motorbike with about 30 chickens in the back of his bike, a motorbike with about 20 dogs in the back, and a cart pulled by a mad looking humpbacked cow...pretty cool :)
That day we took a tour on the back of two motor bikes to some of the surrounding sites including an area nicknamed 'Halong Bay 2', a series of small islands situated in the rice fields, it was a lovely tour through several little villages surrounding Ninh Binh and we climbed to the top of one of the islands for beautiful views, we also went on a boat through some caves and got scammed by an old woman...we had read about it in the Lonely Planet and it was amazing how the two women followed their little scam step by step...afterwards we visited an old temple which was very beautiful, especially as it had started to rain and the drizzle made it even more mysterious!
That evening we went for some dinner and the restaurant owner appeared at our table with some rice wine, it smelt a little strong for me but Stevie drank it and consequently the man kep arriving with more, 5 shots of the stuff later it was time to go back to our hotel. From our hotel balcony we watched the most fantastic thunderstorm and torrential rain - there had been warnings of a typhoon and apparently Halong Bay had been evacuated - we were so lucky we weren't still there! This rain also helped our decision to get the night bus down to Hue the following day to the better weather.
The next night when we went to get our night bus, it was amazing how many people we met whom we had already bumped into in Hanoi, Sapa and Halong Bay.....I love the whole meeting people thing it is so much fun and so interesting to hear people's stories! So, next stop - Hue!
