Budget trip to Northern Vietnam

Day 2

We finally reached Tam coc, Ninh Binh. Although our original itinerary only had 1 night here, we decided to spend at least 3 nights, since our Phong Nha plan was cancelled. The place we booked was the Center Tam Coc homestay. The room was comfortable and the couple who ran the place were very friendly. They also had bicycles and scooter to rent out. 

For dinner we had some fresh spring rolls and bun cha (pork and rice noodles), along with some beer.

Day 3

The next day we started off with the  itinerary recommended by the couple who ran our homestay. They also gave us a very helpful map of Ninh Binh. We first went to the Tam Coc boat ride, which started right outside our homestay. My husband and I were in a boat by ourselves with a lady who was rowing the boat. The ride itself was about 1.5 hours long and took us down a scenic river route with the limestone mountains surrounding us on all sides. There were the caves that we passed through on the boat... the river had carved out a route under the mountain! It was quite scenic, and as many people will point out, it really was like a Ha Long Bay on land. 

After the boat ride, we came back to the homestay to rent some bicycles, and we rode to Bich Dong pagoda. The pagoda had an interesting pathway up to the top but there wasn't a ton to see there, really.

After that, we had a quick meal of fried rice, and then cycled around some of the (very picturesque) inner dirt roads among the fields.  

Later in the evening we took our cycles through some rice fields to reach the bottom of Hang Mua. Hang Mua turned out to be interesting.. it was some strange kind of theme park set up by some local hotel, with the stairs leading up to the viewpoint being the main attraction.  

The climb up was around 500 steps and was pretty tiring. The view from the top was good, with a whole lot of Instagrammers and YouTube vloggers at the top! The view was beautiful, although the green rice was missing as we went in September. 

By the time we got down, we were super exhausted and hungry. We had some fried spring rolls and some beef and called it a night. 

Day 4

We started the day after breakfast by renting a motorcycle from our Airbnb at VND 100k a day. We first drove to the Trang An boat ride point.. the drive was scenic through the limestone mountains.  The boat ride was 200k per person and offered 3 route options for the boat. We chose route 2 because our Airbnb host recommended it.  

We shared the boat with a vietnamese couple. The ride was about 2.5 hours long and was similar in some ways to tam coc, but totally worth it. The mountains were taller in Trang An and the water was clearer. There were enormous forests growing just under the water and fish swimming through all the kelp.. there were a few tunnels, although unlike tam coc, these tunnels didn't seem all natural and had been widened for the boats. 

The whole place had a rather theme park type of feel to it,with some temples placed on islands in between,  a small pagoda with people playing oriental music on speakers for the ambience...and also a movie set from Kong Skull island, complete with 'indigenous villagers' with painted faces!!

Overall it was beautiful and worth the visit. Although it was suuuuper hot.

After some uninspiring fried tofu and stewed goat for lunch, we headed to the Hoa Lu ancient capital.  The drive there was beautiful but we were a little underwhelmed by the temples and pagodas and fish ponds. Probably because of the heat and lack of information on the buildings.. we decided to leave from there to head to Bai Din pagoda, which turned out to be surprisingly good!

Again, this place had a theme park feel, but it was still beautiful. It was a large Buddhist temple complex and took us a couple of hours to see. It had hundreds of statues of buddha and various monks, a 12 storey pagoda that you could take an elevator up, a bell tower, and two large wooden halls with enormous buddha statues. Very artificial feeling, but still, we got some very instagrammy pics. I enjoyed it. 

We returned after this as we were pretty tired. Had some pizza (surprisingly good!), beer, and went to bed.

Day 5

On our last day in ninh binh. 

We decided to go for a walk among the rice fields one last time before getting on a bus to Hanoi.

We took the bus that we are booked from the long hotel at 1 p.m. and it took about another 2 hours to reach Hanoi.