Vietnam: 16 hour overnight sleeper bus to Ninh Binh & exploring Tam Coc

We just got to the bus stop. We're heading to Ninh Binh. I feel like I'm repeating my trip. We've got all our bags here. Ready to go for 16 hours. So we made it on our overnight bus. We've got these little compartments. I'm down here near the window. There's Ryan. Charlie's there. Ash is there. Where's Aaron? Oh Aaron's over here. And there's all the other compartments. So we just stopped in Hue. And they told us where to get off our bus. And onto this new one. So now we're all sitting up here together. Ryan's next to me. Aaron's on the other side. And Charlie is here. Top bunks. So it wasn't really the best sort of like... Yeah I got kicked out. Yeah we got kicked out. I was sitting down there. And then other people came and sat there. But we've got maybe two hours until we stop for dinner. So not sure where we're stopping or what we're doing. Part of the adventure. We've just stopped over. Not sure where we are. But we are getting dinner. What's the time? 6.30pm. And we're getting fried rice. And spring rolls. What are you getting for dinner? Egg fried rice. We just had dinner. And now we're back on the bus. We got ice cream. We got some Oreos. Some Pepsi. And some spring rolls. To share. It's 3.30pm. We've all sort of been like eating out of sleep. And we're about 23 minutes away by maps. So maybe like 40 minutes. Because these buses are really slow. The weather here looks shocking. It's 8 degrees. It's just like loading. I need a bridge. I'm ******* freezing. We just got to our accommodation. All our ---- is just here. We're all freezing. And we're just doing our passports. But check in is not until 2pm. And it's 4am. It's about 8 degrees. And we're just hoping they have either our beds ready or a bed ready in some sort of room. But we're just outside with all our stuff. Okay. This is bed until 2pm when we can check into our room. And I'll let you lie in the room. Morning. Day 52. We had like 2-3 hours sleep. Ash, Erin and I end up being moved into some wardrobe space area. While the boys were literally in a little shack just over there. Like in the beer storage section. It's 10 degrees. So it's only gone up by 2 degrees. And we're standing in this little fire. Keeping warm. Getting smoky. And I think we're all going to go find somewhere to get an extra large coffee. And I think I want to get a beanie. Erin wants to get a jumper. Maybe even some more gloves or something. Just while we're here. And even when we go up north to Hanoi, it's similar weather. So we're going to need it. But this fire. I got a beanie. Charlie got a beanie. Ash and Erin are trying on clothes. There's so many of these shops with North Face and Patagonia and stuff on them. But it's cold. I haven't bought anything yet. Ryan hasn't bought anything yet. We sort of came prepared. We bought these from home. And we've got pants. And then we've got our fleece underneath. So I think we're going to go find somewhere to eat. Get some food. I want some pho. We just got a pho. And we're just sitting here by the fire on the street. Alright, so we decided to walk. We still can't check into our accommodation for a while. So we're deciding to walk to Hang Mua viewpoint. H-A Hang and then M-U-A. It's the viewpoint that Ninh Binh is known for. So it's about a 50 minute walk. I think it was just under 4km. And the start of the walk is beautiful with all these mountains. Apparently 11 degrees still. I don't think it's going to get any warmer. It's cold. All ragged up. Yeah, it's gotten. We're just like shocked. We've just gone for a little toilet break. And now we've got to keep walking to get to the base of here. And that's our little trail all the way up. So we're just walking to the base now and we're heading up there. We're just in the middle of all these mountains. It's about 500 steps up apparently. So it takes roughly like 20 minutes. So it's pretty cold still but might be a bit like wet. So hopefully these sandals do okay. You've got your runners on. I've got my runners on so I'll be good. You'll be good. So we just walked up there and there's like that only railing there and there's like a massive concrete dragon. And then we're going to head back down but to another lookout point that has like the little temple thing. But this is the view from where I'm sitting right now. There's so many boats going along there. So we were just up there with that dragon. Now we're going up here. And we came from all the way down there but look how steep the stairs are. Like super steep. Head to the top. Made it. Okay so just for reference we just like climbed all the way back down and then we're going to walk and now we're back into town. We walked all the way up to that like little tower there. And we walked all the way up around near like the flag. Oh you can't really see because of the trees. But that's how like steep it is. That's us from the ground. That's how far up it is. So it was a pretty it was actually pretty good because of the weather. Like I didn't feel that hot and sweaty but it's definitely a little tough like on the knees and the ankles especially if you're in like just sandals. So recommend doing like hiking boots or runners. Everyone else did runners and didn't have a problem. But there's just all these limestone mountains all around. So beautiful and peaceful here. Highly recommend. Good morning. It's what is the time? It's just 20 to 10. We ended up getting back really late last night. And then we only just checked into our rooms last night when we got back. So we've got like six beds here. Charlie, Ash, Erin's down there. I'm here. And then Ryan's up top. Over there. So we've all had a really decent sleep. Ash and Charlie are at the gym. I think today we're going to go back into the town we were in yesterday. Going to go sit at a cafe and just going to take my computer, take the journals and just have a chill morning. And then I think Erin and I want to get some better pants because I've only got one pair of long pants and I thought that would be enough. We're going to be in the cold for probably the next whole week. And then when we move on and stuff, we'll probably hit some cold weather somewhere along the way. So I'm going to get some proper pants. Kind of like these ones that Ryan's wearing right now. And then a compression long sleeve. And I think Erin wants to do the same because she's going to do Haijan loop. So yeah. How's everyone feeling? Cold. Cold. I'm tired. But good. So I just sitting at a cafe. I'm editing videos. But we went and got some warmer clothes. I got like a thermal long sleeve. And then I got these pants as well. I don't know what you call them. Hiking pants. And they zip off right there and turn into shorts. But they're a cool colour. And then Ryan got a new beanie. North face beanie. And a little wallet. It's so cute. He got a new little wallet. Ash bought this jumper yesterday. Hey, what a jumper. Erin's just gone for a walk and she bought a jumper. And a beanie. So cheap. I think we bought all of our, so Ryan and I got a beanie, the pants, my long sleeve and the wallet. All for 500 dong which was about 30 Australian dollars. Roughly 30 Australian dollars. And it's all branded with like North Face and all that. So it seems like the proper stuff. Which is great. Now we're walking to Beach Beach Dong Pagoda. Which is about half an hour walk. Yeah, 35 minute walk. From where we just were. So we're going to head there now and then just walk back into town afterwards and probably get a bar mee. And then maybe head back to our accommodation and chill because we've got to organise getting a bus to Hanoi tomorrow. Which is our two hours by bus. So this is our last full day here. Ryan and I just finished our walk. We got some bar mee. So cheers. Good? I'm going to end this vlog here. Thanks for watching. Hope you guys all enjoyed. And keen to see you in the next one.