Chapter 6.2 - Tour of Ninh Binh

26.2.

10:15 am

I'm getting ready and meeting James for breakfast and coffee. I slept well even though the bed was a bit too hard.

At 6:00 am, the loudspeaker turned back on. Looking forward to the day, I want to go to Hang Mua Viewpoint and take a boat ride at Trang An.

12:15 pm

Sitting on the stairs at Hang Mua Viewpoint. Basically climbing one of these massive mountains. It's crazy how the Vietnamese people dress up and take photos up here. Some women even wear high-heeled shoes. Crazy. 100k for admission is okay, but I find the 30k for parking to be outrageous. I'm imagining how my cloud would look in one of those traditional dresses. I miss her...

9:11 pm

I'm at the Indian restaurant. This time in Ninh Binh. After the View Point, I went to Trang An. You can actually go boating and daydream in the landscape. But when I arrived and saw the thousands of tourists, I turned around and went straight to the homestay. I took a nap from 2 pm to 4:40 pm. I had a slight sunstroke when I woke up.

Then I went to have dinner. There were grilled pork skewers, fries, an omelette with rice, pineapple, and a coconut coffee. After that, I headed to the Hua La Old Town... so I thought. I stupidly followed my navigation. It was the same way to Trang An, but I thought the Old Town was nearby. I must have operated my phone wrong again.

Still managed to take some nice photos. Just as I was turning around, I saw a girl waving. She was standing next to a motorcycle with her boyfriend.

German. All alone in the now empty huge parking lot in front of Trang An. They had a big problem. Some scooters have a type of ignition lock protection mechanism. Usually, there is a hexagonal plastic piece on the key to activate this mechanism. Both of them activated it and now the plastic piece was broken. At first, they didn't want to inconvenience me and said it was okay to keep going. So I did, but after 500m, I turned around again. I couldn't just leave them like that. Especially since I knew exactly how they felt after my incident in Hoi An.

Back with the two of them, I exchanged numbers and offered to come by with my tool if they were still there when I arrived at the room to unlock the ignition lock protection.

But now I'm heading to the Old Town first. Great evening outing. The pictures speak for themselves. The lost couple also got in touch. Someone happened to have the right key, so they could drive off again.

When I was about to leave the Old Town, a few Vietnamese girls approached me. 11th grade. I let them interview me for a school project. It was quite fun.

After that, another 15 minutes to the restaurant and now I'm going to eat :)

10:32 pm

I'm back in the room, packed my backpack, and was about to shower. Unfortunately, the water suddenly disappeared. I'm hoping it will be back in the morning. Accommodation is paid for, I just need to pay for the scooter rental + the bus ride to Cat Ba tomorrow. Breakfast is also included there.

Good night, my loves ❤️