Hoi An - Vietnam

Hoi An was beautiful!  The beach stretches from Danang to Hoi An, where the series China Beach was produced (where the Americans landed in the war)  At night the little streets are lit up with lanterns.  First day we hired bicycles to go to the beach, about 5km away.  Amazing beach, and as we sat there on our sun loungers with a beer, our friends Dan and Amanda walk past that we met in Halong Bay!  The last photo is of me and Lan, a lovely lady whose English was amazing, and worked in a shop where i got a dress tailor made, its beautiful!

                        

Next night was rugby, NZ vs Oz, so we found a bar that was showing the game, took along Evan from our hotel a lovely Frenchman (who for the night was a kiwi, and had the biggest map we have ever seen!).  The bar (3 dragons) was amazing, Auzzie owned, but filled with Kiwi’s.

                      

Then we met up with another friend from Halong Bay, Jack, who took us to another bar, and met some very cool friends, Johno and Deano. 

         

Not much else to say, wonderful beach, wonderful people, and we won the rugby!

Ninh Binh - Vietnam

Today we got on the back of 2 motorcycles for a trip to the ancient capital of Vietnam, and a river cruise.

The ancient capital is called Hoa Lu.  It was the capital of Vietnam 968-1009 and once covered an area of 3 sq km.  The outer parts had temples, shrines and the palace where the King held court.  Sadly the citadel is no longer, but still many shrines.  We also talk a walk up many many stairs to get a view of the whole area.

                                                                

The view was amazing!

                   

And we could go through the square on water buffalo, we decided not to, but look how pretty they are!

    

Then we went for a 3 hour boat ride up Tam Coc.  We visited many temples only accessible by the river, but we lost track of names, i know one was called Bich Dong.  We also lost track of the caves we boated through, going under all the limestone mountains, sometimes having to lie flat on the boat so we didn’t get our heads knocked off.  Temple pictures first….

                                                                

These are some of the caves we went through, lots of pictures didn’t turn out, but will post some videos in the future.

         

And some shots of the river we travelled on, the poor lady who rowed us went solid for 3 hours!

                             

         

In conclusion, this was way better than Halong Bay with much of the same scenery!