Exploring Ninh Binh: Sunrise Hike and Scenic Bike Ride! 🌄🚴‍♀️

Currently very early in the morning. 4.30. We're on our way to one of the most beautiful viewpoints in Ninh Binh and we're going to try and hike to the top for sunrise. So let's do this. We got this. Let's go. We went to the wrong entrance. We ended up in a dead end with no entry sign. So we're going back around another 10 minutes another way so we'll see if we can get to it this time. 100. 100 pad. Thank you. We got the tickets. We got them. Which way? Guessing this way. Looks like we're the only people here which is good though. We've reached the stairs. Now the hike starts. You didn't tell me we were hiking. Why the hell? He said it's about a 15 minute hike up so it's already hot and it's only 5am. Got a friend joining us on the journey. Hey man. He's beating us. He's done this like a million times already. We made it. Nice. This is sick. There's so many goats everywhere. We made it. Let's see how long it takes us to get down. Yeah that's the next thing. We got here at a good time though because it's really busy. People have got outfit changes. But it's cool up here. So we've come to the bottom of the mountain and we found these caves. Pretty cool. This is a bit spooky. Very wet. Might be too wet. It's pretty. It's so nice. I reckon you could spend probably hours here just walking around. There's loads of restaurants and cafes and stuff. This gets probably really busy. So yeah. I think because we've come here so early nothing's open. I think we're gonna head off and go and get some breakfast because we're hungry. Let's go. This place is full of surprises. Today we have hired a couple bicycles and we are off to Trang An. Having a little cycle round. Check out the views. See what we can find today. We've just started the trip and Nicole's bike is already creaking up. See if we can make it. Everywhere we've driven around in Vietnam we've seen the most insane looking cemeteries. All of the gravestones are so pretty and we were just sort of wondering if they were buddhist graves or cemeteries or not really sure but keep stopping every time we see them. It's such a pretty grave. Yeah and then you get the bins. Too many cars around here. You know what would work really well here? A cycle lane. That'll be good. It's much better than having to cycle on basically these one-way roads which look probably a lot bigger on the camera but once you see a car coming towards you it's a bit of a squeeze to get through. It's just too hard not to stop every like five minutes or so when we get past the opening and there's a lake and there's these limestone cast in the background. Yeah they are like beautiful views. They're crazy and we found out that like the way that they were all created was just the same as Halong Bay where there's just so much wind and rain and stuff and it's just completely like eroded all of the mountainscapes and when we were climbing up what was it? The Dawa Budia. The castle we climbed up the other day when you're like walking up there you can feel it the rocks are actually like soft. Also it's so wet around here it shows why like it's just it is always raining here at least in the evenings it is and today it's raining quite a bit today but yeah the amount of downpour of rain here and everything it creates such amazing it looks nice like it's so even over there it looks amazing like with the mistiness today. So all the way over there I don't know if you can see it but apparently that's where King Kong was filmed and I think it said online that they are rebuilding the set so like part of the boat tour that you can do in Chang'an you get off the boat and then like go and walk around there. They actually filmed some of King Kong here and they filmed some in Halong Bay right I'm pretty sure and that's basically super super similar limestone casts as you get here basically but in the ocean yeah this is obviously in the water as well but it's sometimes you just get these limestone casts in the middle of mountains something or fields or things so yeah. Oh I'm covered in mud. Look at my shoes this is why I got these bikes out I was like that's really weird they're quite muddy. They're really muddy I was like why is it muddy that's random and now I know why. Nicole said to me today she said let's rent some bikes yeah this is the damage we just stopped for a second because we just spotted these lonely little limestone casts or I don't know if you can even call them casts because they're so small but they are oh that's yeah you can really get an idea of the weird sort of complexion of them I guess sharp though like that we were standing on those on the top of that cast yesterday yeah really interesting formations oh nice free hat oh yeah so we've just been going past a few more of these casts or the knockoffs of the cast and there's like an example of yeah I guess how they're using the sort of fallen bits probably maybe for like tables and chairs and also just like art it's kind of like sculptures isn't it really hello this is the best part go over downhill so nice I'm tired now let's get a coffee coffee coffee