Today we got up early and raced downstairs to get our breakfast before we were due to be picked up for our tour down South today. We had to be standing out the front of the hotel at 7:30am which we all managed. We were heading to Tam Coc and Ninh Binh down south of Hanoi.
We spent a bit of time in the bus before our first stop at ‘The Happy Place’ This was just a rest stop which sells souvenirs. We had a browse but didn’t find anything we wanted for a reasonable price. Back in the car we were on to the first official stop of today which was to Hoa Lu.
Hoa Lu was the capital of Dai Co Viet (an old name of Vietnam) under the Dinh and Le dynasties and was the capital of Vietnam before Hanoi. There are now two temples built on the grounds of the old royal palace. One is dedicated to King Dinh Tien Hoang, the other is to King Le Dai Hanh. We explored around the temples and the old citadel. It is surrounded on all sides by Mountains which is really cool.
After exploring Hoa Lu we headed to Moa Cave which although it has a cave it also has 500 steps up a mountain to give you an amazing view of Tam Coc. The stairs up were freaking enourmous. Some of them were knee hight. We made it to the top without dying and took in the amazing view. The photos are a bit cloudy but the view was worth the hike up.
We were taken to a resturant in Tam Coc which has a huge buffet. We loaded up our plates before heading down to the water to head out into Tam Coc. Tam Coc means 3 caves and we were to take a boat rowed by a lady that used her legs to row. We spent an hour and half on the water. It was beautiful to be surrounded by huge mountains and rocks. We saw some hawks and some ducks and it was a very nice experience overall.
It was a good tour. The guide was not fantastic but the activities were great. The area is beautiful though you need to be super careful as there are quite a few times they will try and get more money out of you. We were dropped back into Hanoi and headed out to locate some food.
We ended up going to a local pho place which was ok. Then grabbed some snacks and headed back to the hotel to back some bags for tomorrow.