King Kong scenery in Ninh Binh

Tourists really love Ninh Binh’s huge mountains, river and thick, green jungle, the scenery is very iconic of Asia. Many people come because they’ve seen Ninh Binh in the Hollywood movie King Kong: Skull Island, so they know it’s a very beautiful place. You can go on a boat trip on the river featured in the film, surrounded by limestone mountains, and even visit the pretend village that they made for the movie.

The highlight of this tour is the boat trip in Tam Coc. It’s a very quiet, peaceful place, not like Halong Bay where there are many cruises, it’s just a simple boat with a local person rowing. The water is so clean and clear that you can see the fish swimming beneath and there’s no pollution. You might hear people call Tam Coc ‘Halong Bay on land’ because of its karsts and caves, which you can sail into. In fact, Tam Coc means Three Caves in Vietnamese.

Sometimes, we meet local fishermen looking for shrimp and when we walk around the town, people are very friendly. The north of Vietnam, where Ninh Binh is located, has some of the country’s oldest history too. So, there are lots of ruins we can visit that belonged to different kingdoms, including the ancient capitals of the Dinh and Le dynasties.

Visitors also enjoy the many decorative pagodas in Ninh Binh’s countryside, set among rice paddies. Lots of Vietnamese people come to take their wedding photos here. If they’re Buddhist, sometimes we’ll see them at the pagodas in their Vietnamese wedding clothes, particularly in December and January when the weather is changing to spring, which is the most popular time to get married.