Back in South and North Nam

The first stop after Dalat was HoiAn which was a beautiful riverside town full of charm and culture. HoiAn also has quite the commercial kick. It is the capital of tailors and shoemakers and there must be thousands in this small town. I did end up succumbing to this shopping haven and had two winter coats, two linen pants and two pairs of shoes made, all for just over $100 Canadian. Considering you could get absolutely everything you can think of made I did actually hold back a little..just a little though :)! Aaron and I had a great time renting bikes and racing the locals on our way to the beach a few kilometers out of town. Hoian shares a strip of the famous China beach and it was stunning. We also discovered the infamous Bia Hoi or fresh beer. It is an insanely cheap price of $1500 dong for a large glass so you can get 10 glasses for one Canadian dollar! Thank goodness it's only 5% alcohol or you could get into some serious trouble. The above left picture includes us, Suzi and James and a few too many liters of Bia Hoi (if there is such a thing as too much 14 would be the number)! We have really enjoyed our Aussie friends whom we have shared great times with at 6 out of our 9 destinations in Vietnam. This was a great night out and included Aaron and James enjoying drinking contests with the locals and confronting rats in the washroom.

That brings me to Hue, our next stop and home to the royal tombs. We had fun renting scooters and seeing the monstrous tombs of past Nguyen emperors as well as the Citadel, home to the forbidden purple city. Hue also brings back memories of probably one of the worst night bus trips endured. The bus was oversold so since Aaron and I were last ones on (due to forgetting our money belts at the hotel and having to rush back to get them) I had to sit in the aisle...did I mention this was a 10 hour bus ride?! Haha. I thought that it couldn't get worse and then my stomach started to rebel. I won't go into details but I was much relieved when we finally stopped for a bathroom break! After that the night consisted of trying to sleep in the dirty aisle while smelling other traveller's stinky feet and trying to stay cool while lying on top of the engine! We were very happy to reach our next stop Ninh Binh!

Ninh Binh is a little town a few hours south of Hanoi. Its proximity to a few attractions is why we stopped there as the town itself is small and dirty. We rented scooters and took a road trip to Tam Coc. These are magnificent rock formations on bright green rice paddie fields. There is a river going through Tan Coc (three of the largest rock formations) so we got into a rowboat with a local and he paddled us down the river for a few hours. The locals here are famous for their foot paddling techniques, as is shown in the bottom left picture. The river actually had three large caves (the longest was 127m) going through different rock formations which was fun. Ninh Binh also is close to the Cuc Phuong National Park which had breath taking lush, green mountains. We visited the Primate Wildlife Rescue Centre where they rescue monkeys from poachers and those who keep them in captivity illegally and reintroduce them to the wild. The have over 85 creatures being cared for and over 14 species of gibbon and langur monkeys. The babies were so cute and the playful monkeys kept us much entertained. We had a great time on a short 7 km hike with a few friends Greg and Ed to the thousand year old tree in the middle of the park. Exploring a cave by ourselves with two flashlights was a fun adventure and the hike had some stunning views.