Leon and Tash's video: Mua Cave Ninh Binh 500 Stairs - Vietnam Travel

The parking scam, the crazy steep 500 stairs and the crowds that come to Mua Cave Ninh Binh later in the day, are all worth enduring, just to get a glimpse of the amazing views you will see at the top of the mountain, where the lying dragon lives. Or you can watch this video and see how we avoided nearly all of the above, haha. The climb up to the dragon in the Mua Caves area, is one of the main reasons we came to Ninh Binh and after missing out on it the day before due to weather, we weren't going to miss this chance. We hoped on the Honda Wave,s, headed off early and arrived at 7:30am, around 30 minutes after opening. And even at that time of the morning, we still had a couple of people trying to catch us out with the parking scam. Any foreigner going down this road on a bike, is going to be yelled at, waved down and attempted to be convinced that this is where they must park if visiting the caves...It's all lies. Ignore every parking sign and anyone that tries to tell you to stop, just carry on to the very end of the road, where you will see the entrance gates and ticket booth. Ride through the gates and turn left, where you will find a large, FREE, undercover parking area. We normally wouldn't have an issue with locals taking the initiative and trying to make a dollar with a parking lot, but in this case, the stories and more so the warnings we got from other tourists who had been before us and experienced some pretty rough treatment and intimidation, has us labelling these Mua Cave setups, as a Vietnam parking scam to avoid. Entry to the caves is VND100,000 per person and it took us around 2 hours to climb both peaks, admire the view, shoot some video, take some pictures and get back down. We were fortunate that there weren't many people there when we arrived and we made the decision to head straight to the highest peak first, to the dragon! This worked out well, because when we started heading down from there and over to the lower peak, we saw a lot more people coming up. When we arrived at the second spot, there was actually a small queue forming to get to the very top and a number of people gathered up there, all trying to grab those instagram shots. Website - https://leonandtash.com/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/LeonandTash/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/leonandtash/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.nz/leonandtash3132/ Music: Overcome by Ugonna Onyekwe Cartoon Space Utopia by Sir Cubworth We are Leon and Tash, a New Zealand vlogging couple who set off on an amazing Vietnam adventure as fulltime travellers, backpacking Vietnam. But we weren't going to travel to Vietnam for one of those ordinary backpacking Vietnam trips you hear about everybody doing, where they go for a couple off weeks and check out the beaches or maybe riding through Vietnam at such a crazy pace that they never get off the beaten track. No we want more than that. Our Vietnam adventures start with learning the way of the locals, taking just enough time to figure out how things work, discover what the "Must see places in Vietnam" are and more importantly where Vietnam's hidden gems are... To do this, we moved to Danang Vietnam. The plan was to spend 3 months living in Da Nang, meeting and learning from locals about the culture, the amazing food, their way of living and what places they would recommend to travel in Vietnam. And because Danang is in the middle of the country, we hoped we might meet other tourists or expats who were having their own Vietnam travel adventure or were at the halfway point of motorcycle riding through Vietnam and hear from them, what places they thought we must visit in Vietnam. Also, as new travel vloggers, having a base there meant we could try things like doing Da Nang Vietnam travel vlog or creating a Danang Vietnam travel guide, before also taking on the stresses of fulltime travel. Then in month 4, that's when the real Vietnam adventure begins. With our new list of must see places, we will head to Saigon and buy a couple of motorbikes. to start our Vietnam road trip! Motorcycle riding through Vietnam seems like one of the most hectic, crazy and chaotic things anyone could do, but we can't wait!! And we wont be following a simple South to North / Saigon to Hanoi route, we plan on doing more like a figure 8, so that our travel in Vietnam will cover both the inland and coastal areas of this amazing country. So can we still say we are backpacking Vietnam? Or should we be telling people our travel in Vietnam is a motorcycle trip through Vietnam? We're not sure, but what we do know is, our Vietnam road trip is going to cover over 6000km's from Saigon right up to the famous waterfalls of Ban Gioc near Cao Bang, round the northern point of the Ha Giang loop and everything else we can access in between. So we hope you'll join us, the New Zealand vlogging couple, on our Vietnam adventure by clicking subscribe to join the Tribe and experience our travel in Vietnam..