Day Two in Ninh Binh!

Yesterday was so much fun but we were exhausted when we got back to the hotel. At 8:30 we headed out on a motorbike (yes Steven drove the motorbike around so well amidst the crazy traffic!) to Tam Coc, "the three caves". We started with a two-hour excursion by small boat along the Ngo Dong river. Women and young boys row tourists up and down the river for about $7 total. I don't know how they aren't exhausted, but they do trade off rowing with their feet instead to give their hands a break. Kind of neat to see! The amazing landscape is dominated by rice fields and karst towers, the tall rock formations. The route includes floating through three natural caves (Hang Ca, Hang Hai, and Hang Ba). Below is a picture of the beautiful scenery:

We were actually among the few caucasian tourists on the river and that made for a very interesting ride on the way back. There were multitudes of school-age children enjoying the same boat rides and they were just fascinated with us and grabbed their cameras to take pictures of us! Every boat of children that sailed by giggled and said "Hello!" or "What's your name? You are beautiful.". We felt like American celebrities!

Our next drive took us a few miles away to Hang Mua - a 1,000 step round-trip journey to the top of a temple that allows for amazing views of the countryside. We had seen this on a Cooking Channel show - Luc Nguyen's Vietnam and knew we had to go there. It definitely helped us to walk off all the French bread we've been eating!

Bottom of the steps that started our journey.

View from the top!

From here we drove around on the motorbike and had a wonderful time stopping to take pictures and enjoying the views. To me, this is the best way to see a country - riding through their neighborhoods, stopping at their roadside stands, just driving among them.

couldn't figure out how to get this picture to rotate!

We got back around 4:30 in the afternoon and were so exhausted and sore. When we arrived back at the hotel, the manager met us and asked how our day was. I told him it was awesome, especially since there were no motorbike accidents! We headed right upstairs to shower because we were covered in dirt from all the dust on the roads. After forcing some dinner down, we went to bed at 8pm and slept like babies on our hard beds. Wonderful day in Ninh Binh!

We head to the Hanoi airport in a few hours to fly to Danang, about an hour flight south. More updates to come when we settle in to the next destination. Love to all!