Blogs from Ninh Binh, Red River Delta, Vietnam, Asia - page 6

Hi everyone, I’m back in Hanoi with the crazy traffic, the unfriendly Vietnamese people and the buzzing feeling. And I’m not alone for the moment, Bertrand (who I met in Malaysia last month), joined me for 5 weeks to visit Vietnam and that’s really nice to travel with someone. One of the things to see in Hanoi is the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh. Small history lesson (from Wikipedia): Hồ Chí Minh (1890 – 1969), born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc or Uncle Ho was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister (1945–1955) and president (1955–1969) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). He was a key figure in the formation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945, as well as the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) ... read more

After arriving back to Hanoi from our trip to Ha Gaing and the far northern reaches of Vietnam we decided we needed a rest. After all it was our third time in Hanoi after using it as our base for our other travels and we felt we had seen what Hanoi had to offer. So we ran to the nearest video store which wasn't far and bought some 75 cent movies. We only felt a little bad that we contributed to Vietnam's movie piracy problems but we were in desperate need of indulging in doing nothing. We locked ourselves in our hotel room and watched the entire first season of HBO's Game of Thrones, SO good! But we also watched some bad movies, hate to say it but Columbiana was a bust and Horrible Bosses wasn't ... read more

Ninh binh turned out to be quite a suprise. We were in Cat-ba wondering where to go next Sapa or Ninh Binh and we chose wisely. We avoided the tourist route and were greatly rewarded. We decided to do a 3 day 2 night guided moto-bike adventure. We had 2 bikes and a guide. Our first stop was Tam Coc. We hopped off the bikes and into a small boat. We were rowed all around Tam Coc. The view was stunning, it was like the Railay of Rice Patties, very pretty. After that we hopped back on the bikes for 5 hours of riding deep into the mountains to visit our homestay family. The scenery was beautiful all around. The further we got into the jungle the more we started hearing "hello hello" all around. The ... read more

We went to the hotel to book a car for our sightseeing trip, but Mr Xuan kept trying to convince us to go on mopeds instead. One look at the weather was all it took to make up our minds. A day on the back of a moped in the pouring rain was not our idea of fun. Anyway with three of us it worked out cheaper to hire a car. After a traditional breakfast of noodle soup for me and fried noodles with chicken for Andy we set off on our trip in our comfy dry car. I was especially pleased to have the car when I saw the two French ladies disappear on the back of mopeds looking like they had been wrapped in bin bags. We made our first stop in Hoa Lu ... read more

Hanoi > Ninh Binh January 31, 2011 I've been in Hanoi for about 72 hours now. Aside from a run-in with the Vietnamese communist government at the airport, things have been great! Trung's Dad asked us yesterday if we were interested in hitching a ride out to the countryside to visit Trung's brother. There is a car full of his relatives that will be heading out there, and we are invited to join in the fun. Trung woke me up at 5:30am by rushing in and turning on the lights. I wanted to be up at 5:00 but my 'hopeless alarm setting skills' (said with a flourish of hands) didn't allow that. We quickly get ourselves together and eat some banh trung (a traditional rice patty filled with rice, beans, and cured meat) which is usually ... read more