King Kong in Ninh Binh

After just one day in Phong Nha, we continued further north to Tam Coc, a small town in the Ninh Binh region. Here is the so-called 'Dry Halong Bay'. It is called that because limestone cliffs (beautifully green) rise from the landscape and remind of the famous Halong Bay - just without all the water around. However, there is still some water and we decided to take a boat tour in Trang An. You can enjoy the beautiful landscape, go through caves, and visit some temples if you wish. We also stopped at a place where parts of the movie 'Kong - Skull Island' were filmed (a shitty movie, you don't need to watch it!).

However, the whole area is quite touristy. For example, it is almost impossible to park your scooter in public areas without someone immediately coming and asking for money for parking on that spot. And if you don't want to pay, they get very angry. In Trang An, I was chased away everywhere with the suggestion to park on the (expensive) tourist parking lot. I didn't see why and just drove further away and parked the scooter under a tree near a house. And then a man in front of the house started screaming. However, I pretended not to know that I was meant and when I turned the corner, I started running as fast as I could! Luckily, the scooter was still there. ;-)

We had the same situation later when we wanted to go to a viewpoint. But unfortunately, we couldn't avoid it. The entrance fee was much higher than expected - 100,000 dong (almost 4 euros), last year it was only 20,000 dong! But the Vietnamese know how to make money. They simply put up a fence around the path to the mountain (which used to be freely accessible not long ago) and put someone with a cash register in front of it.

The landscape was incredibly beautiful, but this whole rip-off everywhere in Vietnam really annoys me!

Afterwards, Joy went to Hanoi and I went towards Halong Bay.