Ninh Binh and beyond...

Well so it's a new day and time for another adventure. On today's agenda is Ninh Binh. Now N.B is going to be a little more low key, which to be real is exactly what I need. My guide comes and collects me from the lobby of my hotel and walks me to the bus.

Normally I need a couple of hours in the morning to defrost before I am capable of anything, and luckily for me my guide is a talker. Yipee.

Now if you remember me saying, since the boarders have been closed, my pale self has been quiet an attraction, and this bus was no different. I walked on and one old Vietnamese woman visibly grabbed her husbands leg and shook her son awake just so they could look at me. I could already tell this was going to be a long day. I scurried to the back of the bus and prepared my self for a full day of this.

On the bus, apart from the Vietnamese families there was also a Korean family that were also from Saigon. The whole day we were grouped together as the guide spoke to us in English and everyone else in Vietnamese.

The first stop was the Bai Dinh temple. Which was actually really cool. There were over one-thousand different buddist statues several different temples and statues to different buddist gods and a really large bell.

Walking around the temples was very calming and actually what I needed! While we were strolling through I noticed one of the older Vietnamese men on the tour keep looking at me and talking to the guide. Now I have lived here 18 months at this time,and I'm ashamed to say my Vietnamese is less than ideal. However I knew he was talking about me.

He was asking the guide where I was from, the guide told him that I lived in Saigon but I was from New Zelaland. This seemed to please the man, so he asked another question. The guide awkwardly laughed, then he also looked at me.

"Umm he has a question" - of course he does mate. The guide looks super uncomfortable. Damn what did he ask??

The guide starts to talk again "Ahh he wants to know why you have no friends"

Haha wow. Straight to the heart.

I go on to explain that funnily enough I do have friends, they just arent here. I give him a long winded explanation, he translates about five words. The guy looks me up and down, smirks to himself and then carries on his day. Prefect.

After walking around the temples, we got back on the bus and headed for lunch! Now one thing that never fails to shock me here is the amount of food that is always provided. One thing you will never be in Vietnam is hungry. For lunch we had, chicken, pork, an entire fish, spring rolls, rice, noodles, eggs, four different kinds of stir-fried and steamed vegetables and to top it all off a little bit of salad just incase we were still hungry!

I was sitting with my new Korean family, talking about our lives in Saigon when I asked the oldest Son if he likes Vietnam. He straight looks me in the eyes and says no. His dad yells at him in Korean and then sighs, and says yes.

Next we head for our boat tour. The next hour is spent being paddled around the most river. There are huge rock formations and caves and temples. It is honestly so beautiful. They filmed some of the B-role for King Kong here as well which was pretty cool to see (not that it really meant much to me at the time!). The man paddling the boat was super sweet. He didnt speak a word of English but when I took a polaroid picture and accidentally dropped it, he busted his ass to swing back around to collect it out if the water for me!

After the huge lunch, the thing that we need the most is a hike up a mountain, thankfully that is right where we were heading. I reach the first viewing platform and decide that this is good enough. Snap a few pictures and then head back down to the bottom.

Arriving back in Hanoi I am in desperate need of a drink. Angus and I head out and find a rather nice place and park up. As we are having a typical conversation about what animals you should and shouldnt milk, the police arrive.

Now let me tell you Hanoi is VERY different to Saigon. Things never close in Saigon. One bar closes as 5am, the next one opens. Not on Hanoi. The police come at 12pm and things start shutting down. Of course there are underground places you can go, but we dont know where they are.

We head off into the main part of Hanoi in Hope's to find a beer. As we are standing on the corner looking rather lost, a friendly local kid comes up to us and asks us what we are doing. We tell him what we are looking for and he says he can help. He tells us he works at a bar around the corner and he can take us there. Why not, we thought.

Let me tell you why not.

He takes us up the street, around the corner, down the next street and knocks on a roller door. It shoots up and we are hurried inside. He has an exchange with the woman and then she informs us we cant be here.

After being showed a few other places we just settled for a street beer. This man sits with us and he is pretty funny. He goes on to try and convince us that being Western we can legally smoke cannabis (obviously not true), he also seems to think we approached him for help when that was not the case whatsoever.

The best thing he did was when we were chatting about different countries when Angus asks him if he has ever been to France. He snaps, he goes on this huge rant accusing Angus of not thinking that Vietnamese people travel. He goes on to explain that Vietnamese people go all over the world blah blah blah. So Angus says "Okay, sorry, so you've been to France, yes"

To which he responds

"Me? No I've never left Hanoi"

The next day I got to see my Friend Lan, which was my Vietnamese teacher when I first arrived. We had a nice coffee at a note cafe which is wall to wall covered in Notes from people all over the world. We took a nice stroll around the lake before I needed to head to the airport.

Thankfully the flight home went a treat! How delightful 😉