Vietnam 2.2

It stormed all night, and we woke up this morning to the sound of a whole lot of creatures squawking, splashing, dropping nuts on our boardwalk. there was also some sort of Sunday morning lecture being broadcast at 6am echoing off the mountains. Due to the now quite cold weather, we had lovely showers this morning and were able to actually dry off and put clean clothes on. (UG's undies have dried out, but his shirts now smell like Halong Bay - a mild mixture of fish and diesel.)

I convinced UG we needed to visit Trang An ("not another boat tour!"), so we set out early this morning (9ish) to beat the crowds. The weather was cool, and it had just stopped raining, so I didn't have the sense of adventure to try cycling again, so we called a taxi for about $6.

Trang An on a Sunday seems to be a popular Sunday outing for Vietnamese families, judging by the crowds and the fancy attire. We chose the shorter tour, 2.5 hours, including 4 caves, 3 pagodas, and the set of the most recent King Kong movie. The other tour was 3 hours and included 9 caves. But as the other western tourists in our boat observed, "after 1 cave, you get the point." We were paired with a couple from Austria to make a group of 4, paddled by 1 Vietnamese woman. UG had read that this would be 2.5 hours in the boat being hounded to buy stuff. But apparently they've cracked down on this, as we didn't experience any of that. And UG actually enjoyed the trip. He commented how glad he was that he forced me into it, and highly recommended it to some other tourists going in as we were leaving.

Pink lotus in bloom

We were let off the boat a couple of times to explore, including at this pagoda. 

King Kong set.

"Aboriginal village" as part of the King Kong set.

 

Sculpture at the Trang An visitor centre.

Visitor centre building.

 

 There was a taxi waiting in the parking lot, so we caught a ride further north to the Hoa Lu ancient capital. We wandered around some old buildings, including an excavation of the original palace floor of the Dinh period. There were a lot more aggressive vendors here. UG found a set of stairs he had to climb. I got about a quarter of the way up and decided that I'd rather save my energy for Hong Mua, given that we had no idea how far this went and what was up there. So I sat down on a step and waited for UG to come back down. There was a small pagoda and a half decent view. I spent the time chatting with a woman wh o was convinced I needed to buy water since I couldn't make it any further. I *could* continue, I was just choosing not to. Another frequent and aggressive offer was a for a motorcycle taxi. Hop on the back of this dude's scooter, and he'll take us to Trang An! Sure the 2 of us AND a driver on a scooter sounds like a brilliant idea. Yet we got asked persistently.

After the ancient city, we caught another taxi (car) back to the resort. We dropped off our rain jackets as it had warmed up to cool-ish t-shirt weather, and the we started for Hong Mua. With sufficient breaks and water, I made it to the top without too much difficulty. Although I didn't get any photos of myself up there, as I'm sure the sweaty red face and humidity ravaged hair weren't going to make for a great photo. I did get a few photos looking down, though. The once side of the mountain had views of the Tam Coc boat tour.

Getting down was almost as hard as getting up. But again, we made it. And still had enough left to walk back to our hut. We had another home-cooked Vietnamese meal, this time papaya salad with peanuts, more coconut chicken, and a chicken vegetable dish. Heading to bed early to stay warm. Early morning departure tomorrow to Hanoi by train.