Lonely Planet and few other sources had talked up Ninh Binh, 97 km south of Hanoi, as a place to see the real Vietnam. Rice fields, farms and pushbikes, but having taken the train through the mountains to Sapa we'd seen it all and more. The city is sleepy and whilst that is a characteristic that shouldn't be considered undesirable, it's perhaps something we were looking for in a small town rather than a big, loud city.
Lizzie wanted a hairwash and cut, and Steve and I were well due for a shave, so we found a 'salon' around the corner. Steve went first, and at the halfway mark I decided to stick with the beard. This left Lizzie nervous as to what was in store for her, but she escaped fairly unscathed with clean, and slightly shorter hair. Not at all confident that we weren't at a motorbike repair shop rather than a hair salon.
Ninh Binh does hold the record for our cheapest meal in Asia - 57,000 dong for a bowl of duck pho and a bottle of coke for the three of us; AU$1.20 Each! The next day we rented motorbikes and paid for a guide so we zoomed off chasing our man into rural Vietnam. To its credit Ninh Binh did have some amazing scenery that we would have greatly appreciated had we not just been in the North West Mountains. A climb up thousands of stairs and we had a great view over the rice fields and limestone stacks, and if there was ever a place for a coke machine it was a the top, but alas, just a strategically placed pagoda.
Once we were on the motorbikes we found the journey far more fun than the destinations - Tam Coc near Ninh Binh is on a river where we paid to be rowed in a boat through the limestone stacks, but it was too hot, and suffered from day-trip package tourists from Hanoi venturing down and ruining the serenity.
The road-toll in Vietnam is horrific, on average 36 people die per day, and given their population is just four times Australia's they're clearly doing something wrong. We rode motorbikes through tunnels under construction, on roads inches from rollers and graders, and at one stage on a huge concrete storm-water drain on a 45 degree angle. We loved every minute of it and with a decent motorbike and a GPS I could be very tempted to go on a moto odyssey through Asia.
We went to a National Park on the next day which consisted of a 6km walk. The Vietnamese are not big users of trundle wheels though, and it was more like 10km, and our guide, nor map mentioned it was up and down a mountain. The park has a monkey sanctuary that made the long trip worth it; endangered species are bred in captivity, and reintroduced to the wild. Dozens of zoo's from around the world have donated funds and expertise, and it was good to see the Adelaide Zoo was a contributer.
Before we knew it and we were on the train back to Hanoi, where we were meeting Shannon for the Australian Chamber of Commerce's Big Day Out. To be continued![gallery]
