Vietnam - Ninh Binh

This morning I got Gavin to join me in my online exercise class, it’s not usually his thing so he found it hard but I am hoping he will join me more often. Then we packed up, enjoyed breakfast and set off for our long journey to Ninh Binh. 

When we passed the village near the resort it was school pickup time and our guide explained there are not enough teachers so the children do half days in shifts. School pickup was quite unlike what I have seen before, mums on motorbikes and scooters lined up outside the school gates and some already with three children on their motorbikes. Legally, two adults and one child under 5 are allowed on one motorbike. We also passed a man on a scooter transporting his pigs, probably going to a market, and he had them in individual close fitting wire cages strapped on to the scooter, one on either side of the bike and one on the back, not a sight you see everyday! We were told that there is a population of 8.5 million people in Hanoi and there are over 5 million motorbikes/scooters there. I was surprised to learn that the total population of Vietnam is 90 million people and it is a country that is smaller than the U.K, being narrow and thin with a coastline longer than the west coast of the USA. 

We drove through the large town of Mai Chau which was more urbanised than the villages in the rural area we have been staying, here the shops have glass frontages yet there are still dogs wandering into the road. 

We had a brief stop at a roadside cafe for a coffee/iced tea - Gavin is enjoying Vietnamese coffee which is a very strong and bitter coffee mixed with condensed milk! It’s very popular here. 

On our route we partly drove on the Ho Chi Minh trail, this was the route the Viet Cong soldiers used to trek from the north of the country to the south. As they could not cross through the dividing border between the north and the south at the 17th parallel, they crossed the border into Laos and then into Cambodia to reach the south. Ho Chi Minh is still very much loved and revered by the people here, although our guide is a young man and was born after the war ended he says that Ho Chi Minh is one of the greatest and much loved leaders of the world, one of the greats together with Nelson Mandela and Ghandi! 

Ninh Binh is known as Ha Long Bay on land, as it has impressive limestone karsts and rivers - it is a UNESCO world heritage site for the beautiful Trang An landscape and for its temples. We visited the Bich Dong Pagoda today which translates as the 'Emerald Green grotto' and it was named that due to the beautiful green trees around it. It was built in 1428 and is set in the limestone mountains. In 1705 two monks re-discovered this hidden temple and rebuilt it with 3 layers of pagodas. We climbed up all the stairs to the top pagoda. This is an image of the entrance to the pagodas, and I liked the two local women in the scene. The first extra is of a woman on a boat outside the temple, and the last extra is the view from our hotel of some limestone karsts.

We are now staying in Tam Coc Garden resort which is just outside the town of Tam Coc, a very popular place with tourists. Tomorrow we are exploring Cuc Phuong National Park, it will be an all day outing.