A few more days in Ninh Binh

A few days in Ninh Binh, and the sky was gray all the time. What to do the whole day? Hard to say, but before you realize it, the day is gone, the sun goes down, and dinner is on the table. So for you, this post has pictures from two days.
Wake up late – check the sky – GRAY :-(
Have coffee and cookies, and if I were up early, we would go for a soup next door. Waiting for dinner and talking to the guys. Sometimes we did something.
And sometimes something happened at the hotel. One day, a wedding was underway, and the soon-to-be husband with his family stayed at the hotel. They all dressed nicely, and lots of decorations were brought to the hotel. I took some pictures for you.

Gifts for the bride. In Vietnamese beliefs, the red colour will bring luck to the young couple.

Betel leaf with areca nut as a traditional gift

The words “song hỷ” are carved into a melon as the Chinese character 囍. Here, they used hearts and not squares. That means double happiness. Or happy together if you like

Waiting for the rest of the family. You see a decorated lacquer box, covered in red cloth, on the right of the table. And some more gifts on the left.

The other night I was invited to Thanh’s place for dinner. The whole family prepared a meal. That was interesting since I could take a look at another house and the customs there again.
Food was good, and so was the local firewater.

Happy at the YAMAHA shop. Viet brought his scooter in for repairs, and we had to wait for it to be finished. The girls were happy with me and needed a few snaps. I like that – it is an easy way of making a few ppl happy with absolutely no effort!

Next, we went to a gold shop to change money. And on the other side of the street, I see this. Ahhh Indian Food! Let’s go there quickly. Turns out that they serve something strange, which I really want to eat only once. Some baked little pastry or something.

Gray with a few drops of rain. Well – another one of these days…

Next stop: the park in Ninh Binh. Not sure if it is the only one, but it is big and is in the center. As you can see, the Vietnamese learn to drive very early. Still, it does not help. I would say they are in the lower 10% when it comes to proper driving.

The wheel saw better times as well. A few girls were playing, and they were happy when we walked past it. Time to try some of the English they learned in school.

This was the saddest thing of the whole winter 2016/2017 trip: Poor animals at the park in Ninh Binh

A few cages with monkeys

Sweets for the monkey. A woman was selling sweet stuff to feed the monkeys. Should sell bananas or whatever the monkey needs. But not sweet stuff with sugar…

Rare birds? Nope – the usual city birds. In a small cage…

More monkeys

Well, together with the sky, this makes for another sad display

The Breakdance kids had fun. A few minutes later, one of the gardeners saw me and gave me two 10-liter cans of water and signaled me that I should follow him. He brought me to a small patch of land with some seedlings and instructed me on how to pour the water over them. Strange, but a lot of fun! Since I have my personal Vietnamese translator, I could ask all the questions about the strange park I wanted. Which is nice.

Searching for a coffee place – a local one – we stumbled upon this nice pool.

The Mikoyan-Gurevich 21

Better known as the MIG-21 or the Fishbed, as the soldiers from the US called the plane in the last war. It does not look much, but they managed to shoot some US planes out of the sky. Hit and run – do not wait for an air fight. You might lose it! That was the name of the game. Usually, the North attacked head-on with some MiG-17s, and the MIG-21 came from the back. The F4 Phantom was easily outmaneuvered, and the NVA shot down a lot of them.
After almost 1000 lost US planes, America had to change something. The NAVY opened its “TOPGUN” school, and the USAF started a similar program. And they put different planes in the sky as well that could deal better with the light and agile MIG-21