Two Sore Backs

We like to think that we are travellers, not tourists. The thought of all day bus tours to jam-packed locations with shopping stops along the way is pretty cringey. The thing is, they really help when you want to see a place but don’t want to waste time travelling and changing hotels. Plus the tour guides are usually good, and you meet some nice people along the way.

The first tourist trip out of Hanoi was Ninh Binh, Vietnam’s capital city in the 10th and 11th centuries.

Ninh Binh is located in the limestone mountains that border the Red River delta, a couple of hour south of Hanoi. It’s location made it easy to defend, and it now houses many temples and monuments dedicated to the memory of past military leaders.

The second tourist excursion from Hanoi was to Halong Bay. We had originally planned to travel to Cat Ba and explore the southern part of the bay, but decided on the one-day trip to the northern part to save time and effort. We would have had to return to Hanoi anyway to catch a flight – the bus to Danang was a bit too long.

We decided to pay extra for the speedboat tour.

After the speedboat it was onto the slower “bamboo” boats. Here you can see two ladies from Atlanta who were very entertaining. The lady with the hat was appreciative when we were onshore and I would move to block older Vietnamese gentlemen who thought it was ok to take close-up photos of the black and white people.

After the small boats, we went on a short hike.

Then it was on to the Mua Caves.

Then it was back to the boat for the arduous journey back to Hanoi. Our boat ran into a tight squeeze at the dock.