Sunday, December 14, 2008

Ninh Binh

I got to go to a town called Ninh Binh with some friends during the weekend. They have wifi, and ox carts...
...and a lot of ancient pagodas and nice scenery. We took a bus out of Hanoi and rode for about 2 hours, checked into a hotel, and rented some bicycles.One of the major local attractions is Tam Coc, where there are goats (that I heard are delicious)......and boats with elderly people to paddle them. They're actually paddling right through that big rock cliff in the middle of this shot......through a few little caves.When they get tired of paddling with their arms they use their feet.We also checked out some really cool pagodas, and met the nicest guy in southeast Asia. Who showed us around one of the pagodas, told us about the history with a little Vietnamese, a little French, and a lot of hand gestures, played a couple of tunes for us, and even gave some music lessons.
With all of that and some stops for food, it was a pretty full day. When we got back to the hotel, I was out like a light.
On Sunday, I followed Glitter, and Veggies (not their real names) out to Bich Dong. At least, I'm pretty sure it was called Bich Dong. I had some trouble keeping the names of all of the scenic locations around the area straight. They all seemed to be either obscene or unpronounceable.

This was a temple built into a cave...Shot from inside the cave...And, inside the cave there was a passage up through another cave with a couple more altars, that led to another shrine, that had a rocky "path" behind it, that led to this... The view was absolutely amazing. And worth the whole trip by itself.

I snapped a few other random pics during the weekend that I'll post because... well why not? I'm not paying by the picture here.

Incense pot graveyard...
Bird delivery...
Can't get that in the States can you?

And this little fella was our waiter. He helped us pick something from the menu...

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