Beautiful nature of Trang An in Ninh Binh, Vietnam

As mentioned at the end of my previous blog post from Hanoi, my plan to travel to Trang An in Ninh Binh was put to action in a matter of hours. Trang An was on my list of amazing places to see in Vietnam, but my plan was to go there at the end of my trip. The typhoon that made its way to the coast of Vietnam messed up the original plan, but gladly the local hostel manager was so attentive and ready to help without asking, and I got on my way.

Trang An is a Unesco World Heritage site in Ninh Binh in Vietnam. It is a beautiful landscape with the limestone mountains and rivers squirming between and under them. Similar limestone mountains can be found from an another famous tourist destination in Vietnam; Halong Bay.

It took me about 2 hours to get to Trang An with a bus. Not necessarily, because the bus route was so long, but we also traveled a lot inside Hanoi. I had a travel companion now - the hostel manager introduced me to another person my age, who also was backpacking solo. After we settled to our homestay hostel, we made our way to the Mua Cave viewpoint. It meant that we had to walk almost 500 uneven stony steps up the rocky hill. We wanted to catch the sunset and arrived a bit late, so we took it as a challenge - which we won. The picture above is from the top of the mountain, where a long dragon sculpture is a big part of the view. The rocks might be slippery though, if it has rained, and the way all the way up is not the easiest.

Below some pictures from the top of the view point, from the way there and from my hostel.

The next day the Typhoon hit Vietnam and though we were at the edge of its path, we had to get used to the rain. It was raining the whole day, but we didn't want to let it stop us. We decided to make our way to the amazing Trang An boat ride. There was a bigger group of us now, since the previous evening some friends of my travel mate arrived to the hostel as well, so we ended up filling three boats. We were wearing rain jackets and the boats had some umbrellas as well. It was rainy, but extremely warm.

It was just raining at first, but after an hour or two the wind started to get quite heavy as well. We tried helping the locals rowing the boats but I am not sure if we actually made any difference. Hopefully we did. Below some pictures from the whole three hour boat ride. We saw some amazing old pagodas and temples as well as beautiful forests and limestone formations. A few times we also rowed under the mountains in the caves. One of the caves was over a kilometre long.

If you ever go to Vietnam and find yourself on the boat tour, at the end of it, don't forget to tip the locals - we were given a questionnaire to fill about the experience, and one of the questions was "did the person rowing ask for a tip". I think they are not allowed to ask for a tip, but since the pay rates are very low and the job is very demanding and strenuous, you should definitely tip the rowers well.

After the river experience we went to the town of Ninh Binh to get some food together, and later I packed my bags at the hostel and hopped on a 13 hour night bus to Da Nang. I wasn't sure what I would encounter after arriving to Da Nang, since the typhoon had hit the city directly, but in the end I found out that the typhoon had been lowered to a tropical storm before hitting the city and it had not done much damage, which was extremely good to hear.

More about Da Nang and my adventure to get there on my next post!