When I was planning the trip, we ended up having a day without a certain plan and I looked on TripAdvisor for something interesting around and.. I was stunned by the beauty of Ninh Binh. Today, I am suupeer glad that we decided to go there. It was a full-day tour, started at the old capital of Vietnam, called Hoa Lu in the Ninh Binh area where their first king was from and this king, of course, chose home town, Hoa Lu, for capital of the country. The capital was surrounded by limestone like it is today and all these limestone mounts provided for a good defense against the Chinese in the old times when Vietnam was still called Đại Cồ Việt. The tour guide told us that the first king Đinh Bộ Lĩnh was chosen as a king and the people thought he will be able to defend them from the Chinese. Đinh Bộ Lĩnh had 3 sons and instead of the eldest of the sons to get on the throne, their father decided that the youngest would be the one to inherit the throne. Unfortunately, though, the king as well as his eldest son were killed by someone from the courtyard. The remaining 2 sons were too young to be on the throne and these were turbulent times. The Song dynasty took advantage of that and sent the Chinese to invade Vietnam. The leader of the army of Đinh Bộ Lĩnh also took advantage and after defeating the Chinese, he dethroned the young son who inherited the throne from his father and proclaimed himself an emperor of Dai Co Viet. This was the end of the Dinh dynasty.
One of the best parts of that day was the boat tour on a sampan boat barefoot driven by a lady on the back of the boat. We sailed among the limestone rocks and rice paddies in Tam Coc town as well as climbed the stairs to the top of some of these limestone rocks and had a view from the top – soooo stunning, this was such an amazing part of the trip. Oh, I should NOT forget to mention how excited I was when i saw my absolutely
favourite character DANBO, or as i call him “кашончо” (“kashoncho”, i.e. cardboard man), whom i used to print on hard paper and then fold it to get a real Danbo for decoration or to give to some people 😀 One would take me several hours to complete. When I saw them in the garden at the base of the Ninh Binh limestone gardens where we went, I was sooo excited. I sooo love Kashoncho ❤️ Just look at how adorable he is ❤️ Here’s a link in case you get an urgent rush to fold one of your own 😀
By the way on the way back, we saw a huuuge cathedral/castle-like structure and while we were in awe about it, the guide told us something really bad – the owner of the “house”.. yes, it’s a house.. a PRIVATE property.. belongs to a millionaire who owns a construction materials company and he produces limestone to sell for building houses, however what he does, is he basically buys the limestone rocks and breaks them down for materials. So in a few decades, this heavenly place will probably be completely gone if the government doesn’t do anything to protect it.
Check this out.. –>
I’d say we definitely shouldn’t worry about this guy..
We also went to some caves, the Mua Caves, but they weren’t really anything special. Then it was time for another 1-2 hour drive back to Hanoi and dinner 🙂 We figured that the fancy hotel we stayed in (i’m saying this not to brag, but to bring to your attention how cheap this hotel actually was, for the same price you could probably get a 2, maybe a 3-star hotel in the Netherlands, so we decided to treat ourselves for once and get nice hotels in Asia – it was a great decision, cheap when you come from Europe, but also the type of place I wouldn’t normally book since you don’t really stay a lot inside anyway, you normally just need a shower and a bed, so it really was interesting to experience the “luxury” for once). So we figured that our hotel had a restaurant and since we were lazy, we tried it out – it was soo good and also a bit more western, so it was nice also because i knew i’d only eat rice for 3 weeks, so I embraced the pizza 😀