Hanoi to Ninh Binh

Happy Birthday Jeff!!

Today we had a nice slow morning by getting some extra sleep and taking our time. We walked out of the hotel to a rainy morning, our first rain since leaving Adelaide. We had breakfast on the 3rd floor balcony of a small Vietnamese restaurant, overlooking one of the many alley streets in the Old Quarter. We then had the formidable task of finding a post office (again), but this proved to be much easier than recent experiences in China. We bought a few needed items at the grocery store and caught up on news from home through the internet.

We ate our last dinner in Hanoi, collected our bags and went to catch the bus to Ninh Binh (Not to be confused with the hippie pot town of Nimbin, Australia). The bus was scheduled to leave at 7pm, we left at 7:20 only to drive around the block to a police station to offload half of the luggage loaded under the bus 20 minutes before. The packages looked suspicious as they were all in plastic garbage bags and well taped up. We waited about 30 minutes while discussions went on about something and we were finally on our way. It was a cold 2 hour bus ride to Ninh Binh. Arriving somewhere in town (we were dropped in a random place) we walked 5 minutes to our hotel, booked a tour and went to bed.