Saturday, September 20, 2008

day 34 - Ninh Binh, Hoa Lu - 19.09

Today I got to visit ancient capital of Vietnam - city of Hoa Lu. City itself has been destroyed and only few temples remain. I visited both of the temples and found another active temple area between the narrow streets (just followed the arrows :) ). Landscape in Hoa Lu is fabulous though. In Tam Coc I got to see the rocks sticking out of the ground from distance, but now I was in the middle of them - gorgeous. Temples were like any temple - many little rooms all connected and with huge altars.

Motorbike ride was a bit easier this time, it was 15km from Ninh Binh so it was further away but the road was a bit better (or I had just mastered the art of not flying off the bike :) ). On the way there we passed through funny round tunnels, I wish I could have taken a picture of them. Tunnels took us through the hills. On the way back we took a different route and passed through some small local villages with extremely narrow streets.

Once I got back to Ninh Binh I tried to go and visit the local church here, but it was closed :( So I went to the local market instead.

I figured that I won't try to squeeze another town in, so I will return to Hanoi tomorrow at noon. The bus will pick me up from my hotel (how nice :) ), bus ride will be about 2 hours as they say, also air conditioning was promised - will see will see.

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