The best things to do in Ninh Binh 🇻🇳 Beautiful Trang An boat ride & incredible Hang Mua viewpoint

Hi, we're Jordana and Grant from Shot in the Dark Travel. Come join us on our epic adventures around Southeast Asia. In this video we are continuing our exciting adventures in Ninh Binh, Vietnam. Watch us experience some of the best views in Vietnam and maybe even the world as we climb up the Hang Mua viewpoint and enjoy the relaxing and beautiful Trang An boat ride. We're up later than we should have been this morning and we can thank our new friends from Banana Hostel, Banana Tree Hostel. Yeah, we were up until like two in the morning and we were supposed to get to our current destination at 5am. It's now 5 past 11. I think when we set the alarm that was three hours after we were going to bed, that was incredibly ambitious when we were drunk and then we woke up and both of us were just like, nah, turn that off, we're about to sleep. But, oh well, we're still here with decent time. We've got enough time to do everything we want to do today, haven't we? So we've had a nice little bike ride here actually. It was really lovely, maybe like a 20-minute bike ride, like just through the mountains, like looking at all the greenery. It looked gorgeous and we have arrived at Hang Mua viewpoint. So it's basically on one of the, I don't know if the mountains are hills, on one of the large hills you climb up to the top I think there's about five or six hundred steps and there's a nice viewpoint and there's a little statue and stuff. I don't know how we are feeling, I'm quite scared. I'm just really hot, that's my only concern is how hot I am. I'm a little bit nervous about, everyone says like there isn't really much of a handrail and sometimes it's a bit sketchy, so I'm not great with heights so climbing up some big hill thing with no handrail that's a bit sketchy sounds like my idea of not fun, so let's see how we get on. Either way we need to walk off all those calories we consumed drinking last night, so I'm ready for it. Yeah and the views are supposed to be amazing so hopefully I don't chicken out and it's good. So we just paid for the ticket, it was a hundred thousand each and also there's lots of parking scams. We think we've got scammed, I don't actually know if you have to pay for parking, but we went right to the end until you get into the actual place and it was, how much was it? It charged us ten thousand for two bikes, so we were told there'd be loads of people on the way there saying you have to park here and charging you a lot of money. Which they were. There was literally a woman with a whistle who was like trying to block us. We kept going everyone said if you get to the end it's free. We got to the end and the guy was like ten thousand and I was like that's 38 pence I'll just pay him, I can't be bothered arguing. So we definitely don't stop at the people with the whistles, just go to the end. Yeah right to the end until you get to the actual like, what would you call it? Entrance? Like the entrance, the entrance. But yeah we're gonna go in now. I'm really regretting all the beers last night now, like there's just this long steady stream of people overtaking us as well, absolutely panting for breath. We're just stopping at different times. I hope you're not just being nice. We got six gin and tonics last night, why? Why? I remember at half past one in the morning we said I want to stay off of our drinks. I think we should have gone to bed. Yeah but at least we're doing it, like some people just wouldn't get out of bed, at least we've got out of bed. Yeah just in time for the midday sun, the hottest part of the day. I'd say pro tip is try not to do it in the midday sun, it's red hot, it's absolutely boiling. I'd say most people come for sunset, so it's supposed to be super busy at sunset. Sunrise is nice and quiet but also not that hot so wish we'd done that. I'd say maybe lunchtime is like just worst of all worlds. I'm just a sweaty mess right now. We've finished at the Hang Mua viewpoint. The views were absolutely incredible. I would definitely recommend it if you're in the Ninh Binh region. It was well worth the climb, a bit more effort than we thought. I'd definitely say try and avoid it when it's too hot, take some water with you but the views just looked amazing. There was one bit at the top where I a little bit embarrassingly chickened out. Right at the top where there's the dragon statue, would you call it? Yeah. Right at the top with the dragon statue, Jordana went up and I was like it's a little bit narrow, there's not really handrail, I was like I'm just gonna wait here and I'll watch you instead. A bit embarrassing but oh well. It was just really liked it. After that we jumped on our bikes, we rode up to Trang An and we are going to have a boat trip down the river and the views are supposed to be spectacular so really excited about that. Can't wait to see how it looks. And also look at these views from the cafe where we're having our food. So this is our food and Jordana modeling. It was maybe like 40,000 Dong per person so pretty cheap, can't really go wrong with that and look at the views here. We're on the Trang An boat ride now and even though we've only been on it about 10 or 15 minutes, I think I can comfortably say the scenery looks a lot more spectacular than the Tam Coc ride. We really like the Tam Coc boat ride but this one, the scenery is just next level. It is very touristy though, that's one thing to mention. There are a lot of boats out here and I think coming here really early would probably be your best bet as soon as it opens because you'll probably get less people but even then it's still really beautiful. Yeah when we just set off at first we were in a convoy of maybe like 15 boats all with the orange life jackets on and it does take away from the scenery a little bit but it still looks amazing. We got stuck in front of these people that were just being so loud as well. Yeah we were buzzing, we managed to overtake them and now we've got a bit of room in front of us so it looks even better. Jordana's doing a bit of paddling. We found that there were some extra oars in here and we weren't sure if we were supposed to be using them from the start to help out the oarsman at the back. The oarsman? I was gonna call her boat lady, I don't know what to call her. Oarsman or boat lady? Oarsman slash boat lady and yeah now we've seen that we've got our own paddles we maybe should be helping out a bit just to take a bit of the load off. Yeah so grab a paddle. So we're currently sat really low in the boat as you can see. I think I keep getting cramped so I'm a little bit nervous if I get that in here but yeah this is getting very low isn't it, wow. Let's hope she's good at steering. We both absolutely love the Trang An boat journey. It's been so fun just it's been incredibly relaxing just sitting here listening to the noise of the water just looking out all the fantastic scenery. Jordana just said then I'm so relaxed I think I might fall asleep which I think is partly because it's so relaxing here and partly because we stayed up too late last night. I'm so tired but and we did like such a long boat ride here. We did, we did but yeah honestly I feel like I could do this all day. We're just sitting chilling just looking at like some of the best views in the world and just relaxing. So we've just got back from our Trang An boat trip and Jordana's just in the shower and I realised we've not shown you the room so I thought I'd give you a quick quick one server of the room just to show you where we're staying. So we are staying in the Tam Cock Holiday Hotel and Villa which is right in central Tam Cock. It's a great location, room's pretty decent like nothing special but clean and spacious. Jordana's in the bathroom so I won't show you that. Got a small balcony which I can't open. Looks out onto the pool that's downstairs and we've got a bit of a view as well of the mountains which is cool. So it costs 800,000 Vietnamese Dong per night which is decent price for what it is. So yeah we've like stayed here, nice little hotel. One thing I probably need to tell you about is our trip back from Trang An because it was a bit of a bit of a disaster. So on the way there I went on Google Maps and I put it in as if we were walking and it took us up these tiny little dirt footpaths that were so narrow we couldn't actually ride our bike. We had to keep getting off and walking because it was so narrow. So on the way back I had a great idea that I just set it to as if we were a car. We're on our little single gear old lady bikes with the basket at the front so you can put your shopping in and we're on like a six lane freeway and all the cars are overtaking us. It was quite scary to be honest. I didn't dare get my GoPro or my camera out to film anything. I was just desperately trying not to get hit by a HGV or a lorry that was overtaking us at you know five times our speed. We may be on it for about 15 minutes and it was maybe the scariest 15 minutes of the entire trip so far. There was quite a few bits where Giordano was like why are they beeping at us and I'm like I don't know but we need to keep driving. Got back safe and sound that's the main thing. With it being sadly our last night in Ninh Binh we met up with our friends from Banana Tree Hostel and partied till the early morn. Ninh Binh will always be in our hearts and was definitely one of our favorite experiences from our time in Vietnam. If you've enjoyed watching please like and subscribe to see more videos and we'll see you in the next one.