We arrived at the hostel at 5am, it was a struggle to get in because the gates were padlocked but the minibus that dropped us kept beeping the horn until someone came. Luckily they showed us straight to our room and didn’t have to check in until the morning.
Straight in bed, we didn’t rise until almost 11am after the bus journey.
The only way to get round here is by scooter, or guided tour- a scooter it was then. The helmets we got were a bit of a joke, a bit like toy helmets but probably better than nothing. David was driver and I was the satnav on the back with Google maps screaming instructions. We decided to go to Bai Dinh, the biggest ancient pagoda in South East Asia. David did well driving, luckily the roads are very quiet and straight forward up North a bit.
Once we arrived and parked up we decided to walk to the site’s rather than pay for an electric buggy ticket. It wasn’t actually that far to walk to it but once we got there the amount of steps in the place was ridiculous. As usual I had loads of layers on and they were being taken off at each flight of stairs. Once we reached the top I needed to take my leggings from under my trousers but there were only men’s loos, so in I went regardless. Once through the rock face with all the Buddha statues and incense we presumed the multiple flights of stairs would take us on the right path, o how we were wrong, they led to a dedicated end and we had to start again walking all the way back up again.
In each section of the pagoda there were huge temples with multiple gold statues of Buddha,and hundreds of smart ones encased in glass over the walls.
Manymany more steps later we found our way back to the scooter and it was a 5km drive back to the hostel.
Once we got back we went to look at the surrounding hostels to heck out the menus for dinner later on, just nextdoor there are about 3 hostels backing onto a lagoon with limestone cliffs in all directions, pontoons and a small island housing cattle. It was so pretty and perfect for a beer!
In the evening we both sat on the balcony bit just outside our room, I read my book and ended up having a snooze- standard.favid looked into his diving and watched Netflix. It was a very comfy spot until all the mosquitoes came down, this meant it must be dinner time.
We ate at the hostel next door, it was the Vietnamese quarter final of the Asian cup and the group of guys working in the restaurant had set up a TV. At any opportunity they would scream and yell, so funny, at one point one guys was slamming a chair against the floor in frustration- they lost which was a shame because their celebration had they won would have been epic.
We were laughing because I clearly overspent on my tea tonight, mine came to almost a hefty £3 when David’s only came to 80pence, that’s me not eating for the next 3 days to make up for it 😂😂😂 this meal was the first meal that we are both fed up of eating veg with rice/noodles, almost 3 weeks of it every day is beginning to get boring!
South East Asia 2019 