We woke up to rain on our second day in Ninh Binh. And lots of it. I was curious if that was going to change the plans for the day and we’d be riding around inside a car instead of on the back of a scooter, but nope, our guide arrived at 8:30 am with scooters and ponchos. A little rain never hurt anybody afterall.
The rain meant we didn’t see another tourist out on the roads while we were which was pleasant. After about a half hour ride, we arrived at the Trang An entrance for the boat ride. Yes, boat ride. In the rain. Though when we arrived, they told our Toan, our guide, that we needed to wait for the rain, so we went inside to wait.
But then Toan came to get us about 15 minutes later, saying it was time to go. Who knows what we had been waiting on, but it certainly wasn’t the rain as it was still coming down strong.
We hopped into our little boat with two Vietnamese men, and the tiny Vietnamese woman in the back who would be paddling us down the river. With no current. Those little ladies must be so strong.
It was such an interesting experience because we were the only foreigners around. Everyone was Vietnamese, and no one spoke English, so we never had any idea what was going on. I didn’t need any translation to appreciate the beautiful scenery though, even through the rain.
All of a sudden, we were going through a crazy cave in which we had to basically flatten ourselves against our legs so that we didn’t hit our heads on the stalactites.
On it went like this, alternating between gorgeous mountainous scenery and going through awesome caves.
We stopped at multiple pagodas and temples along the way as well, though since we can’t understand Vietnamese, we weren’t sure exactly what they were.
One of them required a climb up a billion stairs because I hadn’t climbed up enough stairs the day before. I was sore, so I wasn’t terribly pleased about this. The worst part was that it was a climb up stairs and then down the other side, and then we had to do it AGAIN to get back to the boat.
We then reached this bizarre point where it stopped raining outside, and starting “raining” inside with water pouring down from the cave ceilings. I had decided it was safe to get the good camera out instead of using the GoPro since it wasn’t raining anymore, and then we got into a cave that decided we needed to be wetter than we already were. The next couple caves were the same way.
Once we got close to the starting point, I once again saw the benefits of being early risers. We may have had wetter weather, but there were only 2 little boats on the water, including us, when we headed out, and by the time we were getting back, they were endless. The river was so congested, and the station had what was almost like a conveyor belt of boats. Tourists would be hurried onto a boat, it’d push off, and the next boat would be there, and on and on and on. Still no westerners that we saw anywhere though.
We met back up with Toan and headed off for lunch. Again we were given more food than we could ever eat, and then we sat down with some locals to sip some ridiculously strong tea.
Our next stop was Bai Dinh, the largest complex of Buddhist temples in Vietnam. The place is massive. There was the older original temple with shrines and a fairy pool inside caves.
But the new complex is a decent walk away and covered most of the area. It started being built in 2003, and was “completed” in 2010, though they still add on to it.
It was great having Toan with us for this because he was able to explain the context, give some history, teach us some Buddhist beliefs, and share humorous anecdotes.
He also had to be translator for us, when a group of Vietnamese tourists came up wanting to take pictures with us, like we were famous. After a dozen photos, I thought we were free to go, but then they all wanted to take pictures with just me as well. So there I was, wet, messy hair, sopping wet jean shorts, hiking sandals, makeup washed off my face from the rain, posing for photos right and left.
But the stairs. I cannot express to you how sick of stairs I was at this point, after our jungle trek yesterday, and the various stairs during our morning Trang An tour, but alas, there I was climbing stairs, and more stairs, and more stairs, and more stairs, and more stairs. Just when I would think we were done climbing stairs, there were more stairs. By the end of this vacation, I’m going to have the world’s greatest butt.
We spent the whole afternoon walking around the complex.
We took a scenic route home, going along the old road instead of the new, nice road. This took us through some rural towns, and brought us to some pretty views of “Halong Bay on Land”, as the Ninh Binh area is often called.
We hung out that evening at the hotel, taking some time to relax before another day of travel.
We had a few hours the following morning before we needed to take off, so after breakfast, we borrowed some bikes from the hotel, which allowed us to take in the views a bit better than when we were racing by on a scooter.
We stopped at Bich Dong, an older Buddhist pagoda in pretty scenery.
After arriving, we discovered that we were not appropriately dressed, as you’re not supposed to wear shorts there, so we decided not to be disrespectful and go up to the sacred temple. We stayed outside, and after awhile, went back to our bikes to ride into town a bit.
We checked out of our fancy hotel at noon, and our driver came to take us the 3 hours back to Hanoi airport. Our flight got delayed three times before we could finally fly to Siem Reap, where we were met by a tuk tuk to take us to our fabulous little boutique hotel. More on that later.