Vietnam

Day 11

After leaving the hotel this morning, we spent a pleasant couple of hours learning about traditional Vietnamese water puppets. We went to the home of a famous puppeteer Mr Lim, in the minute back streets of Hanoi.

He did an amazing puppet show for us, and let us have a go at playing with them. Really difficult! He also showed us how the puppets are made: carved from wood, then coated with resin and paint to keep them waterproof.

We headed out of Hanoi in our little bus. Crazy traffic. We were a few hours on the road.

We visited a beautiful temple called the Dinh temple, which was built in the 17th century. It also included an archaeological site, where 10th century artefacts have been found. Pouring rain again!

Really interesting.

We visited a private home for lunch. Mr Wang made us some superb food.

We arrived at our hotel mid-afternoon. It is in Tam Coc, part of Nimh Binh. Rested up for a while.

Later in the afternoon, we went to a local bird sanctuary. Because Nimh Binh has a lot of limestone in its rock formation, there are some great caves. We went through the caves in a little boat rowed by a woman using her feet.

After the cave, we walked further into the park, and got into bigger boats to visit the birds. There seemed to be 2 or 3 species of egrets or herons, all coming home to roost in trees on little islands . It was lovely watching the sun setting over the weird limestone mountains while birds swirled and swooped around. Quite primeval.