Our New Zealand Adventure: Day 70 Bike rides, climbing, mad queues and caves and finally dinner at the Hilton

Sunday 11th March
Our pick up was at 0830, the car was going to drive us to our start point for a cycle ride through the rice paddies.
Breakfast looked appetising but was served cold . I should have had the Pho. Karen's banana pancake was warm.

Our driver was waiting when we checked out, he got confused as to where we had to go at first but shortly after we arrived at a car park, where Nam was waiting for us with three bikes.

Comically most bikes in Vietnam are too small for me, Nam had found the two biggest bikes for me and Karen, but mine proved to have a loose crank, for which no one had a socket wrench. So we got Karen a smaller bike and extended the seat to the max, and I took the one she had.
Cycling around the fields was all on the flat. This is pretty fortunate because the bikes don't have gears, and although it was a tall bike the frame dimensions were odd and you could really feel it in your knees. Karen didn't have any problems. Nam took us into the paddy fields and even along the ridges between them. It's a bit bumpy but doable. And a lot of fun, without our guide we'd never have attempted it. I'd have been concerned about the free ranging buffalo if nothing else. This was a great chance to see life going on, its not a tourist destination, this was families tending their ancestral plots, planting the rice fields.

Graves are either in small groups in a village cemetery or can be put on ancestral land. These are the final graves, containing the burnt bones of the person and have to be raised up above the water level in the fields

buffalo were free to roam on the ridges between plots

village communual graves

planting rice fields

We found a carpark for bicycles where we parked up to visit the dancing caves and climb Lying dragon mountain, (505 knee high steps), and the peak by its side. Nam organised the tickets and the negotiations for the bike park, we were free to just enjoy the day.

entrance, the path and steps in the background

On the walk in there were a number of statues, including a nativity scene and Christmas tree. In March!

Horse statues

In the dancing caves Karen noticed a side passage our guide avoided and took us down, this lead to an underground pool, Nam mentioned you could go further when the water levels were lower. Bending down to accommodate the low roof meant Karen dropped her sunglasses, even though we turned back immediately to find them they had already gone. The dancing caves are where the concubines for a former Vietnamese king used to dance for him.

Climbing to the top of Lying dragon easily gave us the most spectacular views of Vietnam we've seen.

lots of steps to climb

and climb

and keep climbing

yet more steps up- but the view was spectacular

small peak off to one side, we climbed this after Lying dragon mountains main peak

looking down from the top

Nam, our guide

As we climbed we were again asked if we would have a photograph with people (like in Hong Kong) we also got a lot of smiles and a fair few "hellos". Karen heard someone speaking English and it turned out it was an Australian who had come from Singapore so we grabbed a few tips on what to see and do there.

From the peak next to Lying dragon you can see the dragon on the peak that gives it it's name.

not a lot of worry about health and safety here, a notice near the bottom told us to be careful because no one was responsible for our safety, there were no handrails or cordoned off parts, in places there was just a steep drop to the side, the steps were uneven and worn and the sheer amount of people climbing up and down and congregated around the small area at the top was in itself a danger at times. We loved it!

on top of lying dragon mountain looking at the smaller peak

on the smaller peak looking up to Lying dragon mountain

On the way back to the bikes we encountered a couple of old friends from our TV childhood. (We learnt a lot more about these characters when we went to Where Gods are Born in Singapore which suddenly made sense of the TV show, "Monkey")

Back to the bikes and off to see the next thing. Eventually the clunking of my pedals broke the chain on my bike so I swapped with Nam, we rather guiltily left him to fix the chain and went to see another Buddhist temple.
As we cycled back we collected Nam who had magicked a chain splice link out of a plastic bag, we gingerly cycled back.

this temple had work being done on it

more dragons

Lunch was in a local restaurant where Nam and our driver left us to eat. Again the food here was fresh, healthy and so delicious, generally steamed rather than fried and plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit. After lunch we were travelled to our last thing of the day, Trang An river trip through limestone caves.

The geography of Vietnam is spectacular when you're floating between tall limestone peaks along flat slow rivers between and through them.

Nam picked up our tickets and we joined the queue. The queue started out fairly crowded, but as we progressed in the queue, the queue progressed to mosh pit. It was frightening especially the surges when people thought they could progress and would push violently forward. We were stuck in it, there were too many people around us. At least we were tall enough to see over the top unlike the women with small children caught in there. Army soldiers patrolled the sides but nothing was done about the children. Suddenly the big wooden gates in front of us opened and the crowd surged forward again. We tried to keep hold of each other but it was really difficult, the crowd took you along with it. Once inside we had to queue along three sides of a big hall with another set of doors at the other side guarded by more army personnel. Again people were pushing to get past and Karen was worried about the small children around us. Eventually the army people started to pull out small children and move them through to the front generally accompanied by their mothers, almost equally tiny.

Outside in the queue

inside the hall

Eventually we emerged onto the bank of the river which was all but turning into a fight for boats, lots of shouting, sometimes people leaping between boats, people waving money at the boat rowers to entice them. There were no barriers or orderly queue, just steps down to the water and people trying to be first. While we were in the queue a young boy had started practicing his English on us, and we were on the bank next to each other, so when a uniformed guy pulled us out of the mêlée and took us to one side to a waiting boat we took him and his mum with us. We were obviously being given special treatment as foreigners and we were glad to take it.

small boy and his mum

trying to board the boats

life jackets were in each boat, but you had to get in the boat without falling in the water first!

jostling crowd of people trying to board

Whilst most of the boats were 6 to 8 people to a boat, we were 4. Plus we took a route through the caves no one else took either, I guess we got extra special treatment.

live music was being played as we passed pagodas on the banks or in the middle of the river

many of the cave roofs were very low

The boy translated a few things like "keep down" which was essential, lots of the cave were very low.
Half way round there is a break to visit temples and the movie set for Kong:Skull Island. We had to leave our boat and were clueless about what we should do. We were very grateful we had the boy and his mum with us as they showed us around, even offering to share their offerings so we could put something on the altars. We offered to buy them an icecream each, which our small friend ate with enjoyment. It wasn't expensive for us but in Vietnam terms they definitely were. His mum put hers in the bag they had, we're not sure if she didn't want it but couldn't work out how to say it, wanted it as a souvenir, couldn't eat it or we had done something wrong in offering to buy it. We're pretty sure the icecream would have melted by the time we left them!

drop off at the temples was mercifully uncrowded

giant turtles lined the route to a path

King Kong set

complete with people in costume

set props were in place as we wandered through

The movie set can only be described as surreal after visiting temples. We then made our way down to a different dock where we had to spot our boat to pick us up. As we didn't know we had to do this it was again lucky we had the boy and his mum with us. We hadn't looked for a way to distinguish "our" rower and boat from the hordes of other boats waiting for their passengers. This was a relief as I'd managed to leave my sun glasses behind. We then took a route paddling to the start of this adventure. As we floated along, people in the other boats would stare at us and a few called out hello, when we smiled and responded they would keep calling hello back to us. We didn't see any other foreigners on the river and we were definitely a novelty to the people around us.

pick up point after the movie set, boat people hanging back and trying to spot their passengers

back on our boat

Our new friends helped us out with how much we should pay the lady rowing the boat. We said goodbye, shaking hands, and went to find Nam.
He was impressed to see us, I think he was worried we were still in the chaos or lost forever.
The market place we walked back through had people with machetes cutting up pineapples on the spot for people to eat as well as many foodstuffs we couldn't identify.

hands of bananas on sale

pineapples waiting to be cut up

As we walked back through between the narrow stalls thronged with people there was a big ford explorer heading towards us. It was our car come to pick us out of the crowd; total rock star moment as we hopped on board and headed back to Hanoi.