Wednesday, February 19, 2025

We slept better at the Mai Chau Ecolodge. We quickly shower and pack our luggage, because we are leaving for our next destination today, Ninh Bình.
After breakfast we check out and wait for our guide and driver who will arrive at 9 am.

The journey starts quietly, but we have to cross the mountains again, it is very foggy high up in the mountains, and that means we have to drive close behind each other so that you can continue to see the rear lights of the person in front. When we descend again, the visibility quickly improves, but it continues to rain occasionally all day.
It is a good three hours drive and as we get closer to Ninh Bình, the landscape starts to resemble the Netherlands, a high dike along the river, flat farmland around it and villages and towns with church towers.
The guide asks us a strange question, if we eat goat meat. It turns out that a visit to a restaurant is planned that specializes in goat meat. And we want to try that.
We arrive at a very busy restaurant where many tours stop and where we get quite a lot of food, including goat. The food tastes reasonable, not really special, and it is very busy in the restaurant, so everything goes quickly and efficiently
As we drive on, the landscape becomes more mountainous again and then we arrive at Tràng An, a protected nature reserve where we are going to take a boat trip on the river through caves and past temples. It is extremely busy there, we end up in a boat with two very friendly Vietnamese people. The surroundings are beautiful, the caves are fun to experience and the visit to a temple is mainly a visit to the toilet because we can only stay there for a very short time.

Then we go to our hotel in Ninh Bình, the Le Clos du Fil Hotel, which is located in a very narrow street. To get there, we first have to go through a street where there seems to be a lot of restaurants. The reception is friendly, and the luggage is brought to the room.
The room is smaller and less luxurious, but everything is there, especially an air conditioning that can also heat. We unpack the luggage a bit. The room turns out to be quite comfortable.

We go looking for a place to eat and drink something. There is enough but we don't like it. We go for a drink at Pig Family Restaurant, but the service is so messy and bad that we don't want to eat there.
We walk back a bit and pass a number of restaurants, busy and less busy. We choose the busiest, Family Restaurant. We don't really know what to order, they have a lot of duck, and they have pak boung, and we order that, with a bottle of beer and a glass of wine. The restaurant makes a chaotic impression, but everything goes well, it is especially very busy. The food arrives, we were already afraid of it, it is a lot. We eat what we can eat and the rest is left. The bill is reasonable.
Finally we have a drink at a place on the corner of the street where the hotel is located, Madame Mai.

Written on: 2025-02-20

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