We had booked a trip to a tourist area about 2 hours south of Hanoi for today. The tour we had booked was scheduled to pick us up at 6:30. We were both awake by 5:00, so decided to get up and get ready. We went to the hotel lobby and were happy to see that the hotel had packed us an early breakfast. Our tour van picked us up promptly at 6:30 and after a couple more pickups we were on our way. It was early morning so traffic was reasonably light. We stopped for a coffee part way to Ninh Binh, but other than that the transfer was painless.
Our first stop was Hua Lu which was the ancient capttol of Vietnam dating back to the 10 century. We visited the King Dinh temple which was built to honour one of the kings. It was pretty interesting. Tons of school group kids there to learn about their history.
Our guide figured, correctly, that this would be only moderately interesting to us so were soon on our way to the Great Wall of Mua mountain. Here we passed through a lovely garden to the foot of the 500 steps leading up the mountain. 
The views of the area became increasingly spectacular as we ascended the mountain. I was a bit concerned about my knee so I only went up to a viewpoint about 3/4 of the way. Even so, it was a challenging climb. Because it was overcast the view, while great would have been better on a clear day. 
Also it is the off season for rice paddies and lotus blossom fields. We then boarded our tour van and continued on to Tam Coc. In Tam Coc we boarded shallow boats for a trip down the Red River. The really interesting thing about this is that the folks who are rowing the boats use their legs and feet to propel the boats. They’re amazing adept at this skill!
We travelled down the river for about an hour, passing under two caves that had been eroded out by the river. 
The driver then turned us around and we returned to the dock. All along the river were rice paddies. Not much to look at in the off season.
Once we got back to the dock we stopped for lunch. It consisted of spring rolls, chicken nuggetty things and fish and goat which were rolled into rice paper with fresh vegetables and herbs. Dessert was fresh fruit. It was very good. After lunch we were led to a Soviet style jeep for the last part of our tour. Our driver drove us on increasingly narrow roads around the area. We stopped several times to learn about rural Vietnamese life. It was a ton of fun!
. Finally we visited a pagoda. It was ok. Not very memorable.
. Then it was time for the trip back to Hanoi. It had been a terrific day. The people in our group were a lawyer couple from London, a lady and her daughter from Australia and a single guy also from Australia along with us. They were great folks and we had a wonderful time.
As we approached Hanoi, traffic thickened to the point of organized insanity. It is amazing that there just isn’t a huge pile of metal on the roads. It is impossible to describe. I consider myself a pretty good driver but there’s no way I could make it through Hanoi. When vehicles pull up to a stoplight any space not occupied by a truck, van or car is filled completely by scooters. When the light changes all hell breaks loose with every vehicle jockeying for position. Oftentimes there might be a hundred scooters. Somehow it works.
We made it back to our hotel with no incident and found a place for dinner as we were tired and hungry. The food was really good and inexpensive. Then it was back to our room to relax.
This featured blog entry was written by Basebrown from the blog Southeast Asia Adventure.
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