Two Rons Venturing into Vietnam

Phong Nha Ke Bang national park is a UNESCO world heritage site I'm told because of it's caves. Apparently there are hundreds of limestone caves in this area. We went to visit one of the more popular caves - the Paradise cave - which is Asia's longest dry cave. It was well worth paying the $10 entrance fee. The cave was humongous and despite 1000s of visitors inside it felt not too crowded. That's how big it was. The stalactites and stalagmites were immense.

Woke up and it was raining. Looked out of the window to see people riding motorbikes holding umbrellas! We were checking out that morning so had no choice but to ride in the rain. It stayed like that pretty much all the way to Vinh. The ride was none too exciting on the Asian Highway (AH1) either.

Got a hotel room just outside Vinh in the seaside town of Cua Lo. It was a big, posh looking hotel but was virtually empty. As was the rest of town. Tet was blamed. 

Ron had risen early (as usual) and gone for a swim in the sea across the road. It was raining again today and very grey. We needed to change some more money and luckily for us the Tet holidays were over and banks would open today. We left dead town and headed to Tam Coc, Ninh Binh. We had heard it was worth visiting to see the rice fields and take a boat trip to see more caves.

After breakfast we walked to another pagoda which was a good couple of miles away. On the way, as we were walking through the back streets of Tam Coc, a couple of gentlemen who were sitting outside their house called us over to join them and have a cup of tea and a chat. Such friendly people. Can you imagine Mr. Jones down the road doing that to a strange foreigner?

Our trip was sadly coming to an end. It was Wednesday and we were due to fly back on Friday night. We still had so much to see but we were running out of time now. We both wanted to see Halong bay more than any other place so that's where we were going to go. At the Homestay we got chatting to three German girls who incidentally had just come from Halong bay. They said that we'd be better off going to Cat Ba island and taking a boat trip from there to see Halong bay rather than staying at Halong bay itself as it was so busy there so that's what we did.

If you have seen James Bond's Tomorrow Never Dies or Kong: Skull Island or Pan then you will have seen Halong Bay on the screen. It looks even more beautiful in real life. We had booked a day's boat trip so we got picked up from the hotel at 8 am. On the boat there were some 20 other people. Emerald waters and limestone islands as far as the eye could see. I believe there are more than 1500 of these islands popping out of the water and it is truly awe inspiring. Needless to say everyone was clicking away on their cameras and phones. I must've taken more than 200 photos this day alone!

It's our last day in Vietnam. We catch our flights home just after midnight tonight but have to be in Hanoi by 5 pm to hand the bikes back. Actually we want to be in Hanoi by lunch time so we can have a look around for a bit. With this in mind we set off early to catch the 8 am ferry out of Cat Ba. The roads would be busy now that Tet holidays were over. It started raining again - not ideal as we did not want to travel home in wet clothes but...

Four weeks were not enough time to see all of Vietnam. We did not see Hanoi properly, we did not travel anywhere north of Hanoi. I really would've liked to have travelled to Sapa, Lào Cai and Hà Giang areas. Maybe next time.

At the same time, four weeks was more than enough time spent on one trip. In fact, some times I felt three weeks would've been better. I was ready to come home by the fourth week if you know what I mean?