Trans An Grottoes

We got pushed off the bus with our bike at 3:30am in Ninh Binh. Luckily our awesome app maps.me, that we have been using, came to our aid and the first hostel we knocked at let us in.
We looked at various boat trips in Ninh Binh and decided to go with the Trans An grottoes. It was unbelievable, we definitely made the right choice. A small old Vietnamese lady rowed Cara, myself and 2 Germans for 3 hours. It was along a beautiful river that was surrounded by landscape identical to that at Halong bay. Massive limestone mountains were towering over us the whole journey. The river went through 11 caves, some up to 300m long, through which we could visit bays that were only accessible from the caves. The

German girl was part Vietnamese and could helpfully translate the old women for us.
After the tour we grabbed some food and drove to a mountain that had supposedly amazing views. We were late and only had 20 minutes to reach the top. We powered up the 500 steps, with Cara nearly bringing her meal back up, and got to the top. We may have been a little late but the views were still fantastic. One side was limestone mountains everywhere, the other as flat as far as we could see.
We got back rather cold, bought some Vietnamese whiskey and made ourselves some of the worst irish coffees I've ever had.
After the Germans told us that the Trans An boat trip was by far the best we headed to a national park the next day for some trekking. We climbed to a prehistoric mans cave which was good fun. There was no lighting so we explored its many rooms with our phone torches. We then trekked 8km, seeing a 1000 year old tree on the way before driving back to Ninh Binh.