Staying in the paddy fields in Ninh Binh

Well Ninh Binh has definitely lived up to our expectations, and what an amazing time. Although the weather has been mixed here, with temperatures varying from an initial 32 degrees, to a chilly 23 degrees yesterday – the good news is the temperature is heading back up into the low 30’s.

Firstly, we are staying at an amazing location – Tam Coc Minh Hung Homestay. The accommodation (triple room) is great, with a swimming pool and surrounded on all sides by a paddy fields – for a cost of NZ$27 per night.  We were originally going stay for five nights, however we decided to extend for a further two nights to ensure we manage to cover all of the activities we wanted to see.

These activities included going to the Tien Grotto (including a Buddhist Temple that gave us access to a 300 metre cave system), Chua Truong Temple, Buddha Cave, Thien Hmong Dong, Thang Sen and Tiger Cave. Without doubt the most amazing views we saw were at Mua Cave, which also gave beathtaking views over the landscape – after the strenuous climb up hundreds of stairs, to see the sights from opposite directions.

To reach all of these sights we took up the offer of free bicycles, which has meant we were able to cycle through the paddy fields to reach all the our locations – Helena enjoyed this as there were no hills to cycle up.o hills to cycle up.

During one of our trips back to our accommodation we observed some local Vietnamese BBQ’ing 10/12 ducks at a time ……… so us being us made a decision. The next day we went back and purchased an entire roast duck (cost 230,000 dong or the equivalent of NZ$15.74) for our dinner, together with some bread rolls, of course, to ‘soak-up’ the juices/sauces.

We have another 2 days left in Ninh Binh, before moving onto Phong Nha as we make our way down the central Vietnam.