day 256, Ninh Binh

After breakfasting, packing my day bag and stowing Michele with the hostel head off for Ninh Binh, leaving my passport in Hanoi to get my visa extended. We set off and get lost, looking for 1a, the main road running through Vietnam. Eventually we find it and drive the 90kms to Ninh Binh, arrive and it’s a bit of a dump, a busy town, find the railway station and use the internet to find a hotel we want to stay in, check in and go in search of food. We end up at a little street place where we point to this weird soup/stew thing some people are eating, then the lady holds up an egg and we just say yes. We get served two eggs in a little dish, break them open and they are chicken foetus. Not as bad as it sounds though a little strange as the bones were there just not developed and you could chew them. That is followed by the weird stew/soup thing, with massive chunks of what I’m guessing to be some sort of tofu, was almost jelly and very weird. And that we drive the 9kms to Tam Coq, get in a little row boat where the bloke rides with his feet and go up and down the river looking at the karsts, which are described as Ha Long Bay but on land. We also go through 3 caves which is pretty cool, before driving back to the hotel. After shower off to dinner, find this little buffet place and have one of the best meals in Vietnam, some marinated pork thing, some stewed goat, liver bacon and vegetables, some sort of stew/soup thing with goat and fish and rice, we fill our boots and it costs us a quid each. Was fantastic. Back to the hotel, read a bit of my new book (I’d given up on Left Behind, it started out really good and then turned really Christian which aint for me, so started on Lord of the Flies.) Somehow ended up watching 2fast2furious which was worse then I remembered…