After a fun few days on the island of Cat Ba we took a coach down to Ninh Binh, a small town south of Hanoi. We booked a homestay for one night at Tam Coc Mountain View which was superb with a family that were very sweet and helpful. Having spacious beds made a nice change from hostel bunk beds!
As we arrived late afternoon we went to a local restaurant Minh Toan and ordered our first Pho (pronounced ‘Fuh’ by the way), it was spot on we watched Vietnamese version of The Voice as we slurped away.
Sadly upon waking our sniffles had become full on colds and the weather still hadn’t cleared up. We waited around for the rain to stop before renting bikes and heading off to explore (too restless to sit in all day blowing our noses haha). We cycled to Trang An and took a 3 hour boat ride on the river. The driver/rower was a lovely Vietnamese lady who was super strong ferrying us around everywhere. We stopped at several temples but the best point of interest was Skull island, where King Kong was filmed.
After we cycled back we were initially due to get an overnight bus to Phong Na, but given that we had colds and headaches we decided to bin the bus and stay another night here. Unfortunately the homestay was booked up but another hotel took us and we enjoyed a major chill evening.
We will still have to face the overnight bus at some point …
