Paddy Rivers and Stick Insects...

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At last we'd reached the North of Vietnam where we'd been desperate to get to since arriving in Vietnam after hearing so many good reports on how beautiful it was. Not that we hadn't had a good time in the South as we'd loved the Mekong Delta but we really had looked forward to getting here after making a flying visit to too many places on the way.

Our first stop in the North area was a town called Ninh Binh which is thankfully nothing like the hellhole of Ninbin in Australia! Ninh Binh has a lot going for it but is not yet on the main tourist trail through Vietnam and for that we are eternally thankful as we'd had enough of being stuck on that for the last few weeks. We got another sleeper bus from Hue to here but because it's not a main stop on the open tour bus we got dropped at a main junction at 5am very blearly eyed from not much sleep on the supposed sleeper bus!

After a few false starts with accommodation we found a fabulous 2* (yep it had stars!) hotel for just $10 a night where we could rest our weary heads for a few nights. We had a nice breakfast which took us to 7am when our room was ready and we got to enjoy a few hours shut eye before our days activities.

Not wanting to waste any time we hired a moto for our first afternoon and headed out to Tam Coc about 6km outside the city centre. We'd read on a few blogs that the limestone cliffs of Tam Coc surrounded by Paddy fields rivalled Halong Bay for beauty so we'd really looked forward to seeing this for ourselves. We jumped on our little 3 man boat with our old lady rower and headed on up the river into the limestone mountains that surrounded it. Although we'd timed our trip badly to conincide with a tour group it is such a beautiful peaceful place it would be hard to spoil it and we really enjoyed our 3 hour trip up and down the river with rice paddys, ladies in conical hats and more boats all around us. The trip passes through a few caves along the river which were quite fun as you were never quite sure if you were going to get your head knocked off or not so spent a long time ducking for no reason just in case! Dale felt a little sorry for the poor lady rower so helped her row for much of the journey which we were sure she appreciated.. even if she did ask for a tip at the end!!

We took a bit of a detour on the way back and headed for the back roads behind Ninh Binh. These were equally as nice as the Tam Coc rowing tour with more paddy fields and small houses all nestled in the limstone mountains that were all around. After a while the sun was starting to set and becuase we hadn't really taken much notice of how we'd got there (and with no map again!) we decided to head for home while it was still light.

Our other activity for our time here was a visit to Cuc Phuong National Park, Vietnams oldest park and possibly the best too.. well we thought so anyway! It is act Cuc Phuong is about 45km outside Ninh Binh so again we hired our trusted form of transport and hopped on our moto for the 2 hour journey there. It's a little out the way of the main road and we had to stop a few times on the way to check we were going in the right direction but we got there ok and booked ourselves into the house accommodation in the centre of the park for that evening. The house is about 20km from the main gate so we stopped a few times on the way to do a few short walks to some of the attractions there.

Our first walk was a very short one up to the cave of the prehistoric man. In 1966 they found remains of prehistoric man dating back 7500 years hence the name and we were quite impressed to be standing somewhere that people had done all those years ago. The caves were quite dark and although we had our trusty head torch with us Sophie was still too scared to go too deep inside just in case there was something terrible lurking in there like there always is on the movies. On the way from the caves we discovered our first sign of National Park inhabitants in the form of the biggest sick insect in the world and hundreds of funny hairy caterpillers. Sophie kept her distance from all these but the caterpillers were sometimes difficult to avoid as they were hanging from threads everywhere so you kept getting them caught in your hair which was pretty traumatic. We also encountered the bad side to National Parks here as we witnessed 2 poachers run underneath our boardwalk complete with 2 dead monkeys in their backpacks. We were both quite upset by this but this was made worse when we reported it and no one seemed that bothered about what we'd seen.

After dropping our bags in our room for the evening we made our second outing, an 8km trek to a 1000 year old tree and some more caves. This trek was ok but not quite a jungley as we'd hoped as it was all paved and even though we were slient for the whole 3 hours we only managed to spot a few black squirrels and millions of horrible huge spiders running across the ground... not quite as exciting as the black bears, clouded leopards or wild pigs we kept seeing signs for!

We had expected it to be really busy in our school trip style accommodation so were surprised to find that we were the only people there. Although they had a young girl looking after the house it felt quite solitary staying in such remote place and with only a few hours electricity we couldn't sleep with the light on so Sophie made sure our door was firmly locked at night just in case the boogy man made a visit! (Yes Sophie has watched too many horror movies and is now having to pay the price of a very overactive imagination!)

We woke up early the following morning and made our way back along the 20km road to the entrance where they have a primate sanctuary that we wanted to vist. It's actually free to visit but you have to book a guide to take you so we booked ourselves in after our noodle breakfast. The sanctuary rescues many primates from poachers in the area which confused us especially after noone caring about what we'd seen the day before but we enjoyed having a look at all the lovely monkeys all the same. Our favourite had to be the Grey-shanked Douc Langur which has to be the prettiest monkey in the world with it's beautifully coloured face that looks a bit like someone has taken a paintbox to it and gone crazy. After the centre we had a quick walk around the botanical gardens and spotted thousands of the butterflies that are around this area in April & May which was nice.

With our time in the National Park all up we headed back to town and relaxed in anticipation of the hectic time we'd have in Hanoi the following day...

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Photos

Tam Coc
These were the 'shops'!

Femable Gibbon
In the semi wild area

Stick Insect
This was HUGE.. about 30cm big!!