As for the last day of our trip before heading back to KL, we booked a trip to Hoa Lu - Tam Coc which was the ancient capital city of Vietnam/ Halong Bay on land. Each of its architecture has its history and the city itself was the previous capital city of Vietnam for many past dynasties before Hanoi! Due to its location which was not strategic for war and various reasons, they shifted to Hanoi until now. These places were located quite far from the city center which took us about 1.5 hours to get there and the tour guide was very good in explaining everything to us before we reached there.
At Hoa Lu to visit both Dinh and Le Dynasties temples
At the front of Dinh temple, the temple was very well located because it was by the hills and water/lake
Old Vietnam flag whereby each colour has its own meaning which later replaced by the communist flag!
The emperor with his 3 sons during the Dinh dynasty, they have very long and interesting stories!
Le dynasty temple
Le dynasty temple was under refurbishment when we were there
The last remnants from the war
Beautiful landscape surrounding the 2 temples =)
After visiting the temples at Hoa Lu, we moved on to Tam Coc for lunch and some other activites, for example sampan ride through the caves and riding on a bicycle to visit a temple. One tips, remember to prepare some tips (about VND 20,000) for the sampan ride or else you will be staying on the sampan forever!
The whole sampan ride took about 1 hour and remember to carry a umbrella or a hat!
Rest point at half way.. Everything that they sell were in USD!
Bicycle ride along the countryside to a temple uphill..
If you wish to do so, you can hike up to this point but just be careful because it was super dangerous and a slip would send you up to heaven straight!
A fellow friend from Canada who hiked up with me! =)
The temple at mid point
Time to say bye-bye with the Japanese aunty in front of me!
Last dinner, cha ca, VND 120,000/ pax (grilled fish with noodle).. A very simple kind of dish served with noodle with peanuts, mint leave and fish sauce.
And something that I bought back to KL, the meat loaf!
And that was the end of our trip! We spent about MYR 2000 per person including the air tickets and accommodation. And it would be a lot cheap if the exchange rate was lower! USD 1 was about MYR 4.2 and VND 1M was about MYR 200!
Enjoy and have a nice day!