How to climb a staircase… Step 1
Step 2…
Step 3…
14th February 2020
Today’s plan was to see a dragon (pretty standard day in Asia) but as always when it comes to seeing the cool things in Vietnam it was obviously at the top of hill with 500 steps up to it- I counted them!
We started the day renting bikes from our lovely man at the hotel and heading to find the others, we intended to head in the opposite direction from the day before and this meant we cycled on proper Vietnam roads with all the trucks driving at us and a load of motorbikes doing whatever they like regardless of the traffic signals.
Without dying we made it to the hill, when we got to the road it was on we were stopped by a scary woman with a whistle who stood in our way and tried to make us park our bikes in her little patch of land and pay us money.
She was very insistent that we couldn’t cycle down the road regardless of the fact that the road was full of bikes and people riding them.
After tactically avoiding her (pretty much cycling past her and pretending not to notice her shouting, whistling and pointing) we learned that the road was not pedestrianised but that the small eco town at the end of the road was. This meant that we did need to ditch the bikes so we found a nice family who let us park them at their coffee shop for 5,000vnd (about 17p).
Now on foot we paid to get into the eco village and headed for the foot of the hill.
The village was lovely, best described as ‘very instragramable’ full of places to take adorable photos.
Upon finally reaching the foot of the hill we were greeted by all the stairs!
Wow we’re unfit!
On the plus side though after climbing 263 steps a lovely woman was selling ice cream, that made our life at that point in time. We settled down on the ridiculously tiny stools they have in this country and munched our lolly ices before braving the rest of the stairs.
At the top there was a million people and a spectacular view.
As it was valentines day the boardwalk in the village seemed fitting.
And finally we saw the dragon, which was awesome!
There’s only photos of me with the dragon because there was some serious rock climbing to get up to it and Dan is not particularly sure footed and really didn’t want to fall off a cliff.
It’s very cool tho!
Back down at the bottom of all those stairs, we found a swing which looked out over the boardwalk which was lovely.
Now this was a really hot day in Ninh Bình, (so obviously we climbed a bunch of stairs) but when we got to the bottom we decided an afternoon by the pool would be the best option.
Heading back to our friends hostel we hit the pool!
Me being the wimp I am, did not get in because it was freezing but instead drank copious amounts of cocktails.
This resulted in me skipping home wheeling my bike because cycling really wouldn’t have been wise.
Of course though because it was valentines we pushed the boat out, got all suited and booted and went out to a western place for dinner.
We’d been eyeing up the local Italian all week, stone baked pizza how can you go wrong?
After eating our entire bodyweight in italian food we thought about going our for a few beverages but settled on going home and watching telly.
Valentines has never really been for us.
B
Beth and Dan go to Vietnam 