Today was beautiful weather, sunny and not too humid as the Homestay taxi took us to Trang An settlement for a boat trip. For 90 minutes a Vietnamese lady undertook the backbreaking task of rowing us and a young man from Slovakia up and down the beautiful Song Sao Khe river with towering conical peaks on either side. We stopped at two temples at either end of the trip, which we could have done without; we are feeling templed out and have reached the stage where they all seem the same. People tend to leave goods for the Buddha rather than money as in Tibet, and it was amusing to see that someone had left a six-pack of beer cans. I always thought Buddha was a teetotaller. We had thought of going yesterday when there were so many boats on the river you could hardly see the water and I guess that huge numbers of people travel south to Ninh Binh for the weekend.
The restaurant at the homestay had a wasp’s nest in its room which a small black bird was renting to lay its eggs.
Beautiful Vietnamese flower
Boat launching stage
Impenetrable jungle
Metal stork at the first temple
Sculpture of a fish
Entrance to Dot Cave, 1,000 metres long. We didn’t go down it!
Tiny temple on the river bank
Second temple
Horse in a temple
Conical huts that people used to live in.