It’ll be a short one today because I’m tired (reasons to become clear) and I have a relatively early start tomorrow.
Marble Mountains
What you should know about the Marble Mountains is that they a cluster of five marble and limestone hills, named after the five elements: Kim (metal), Thủy (water), Mộc (wood), Hỏa (fire) and Thổ (earth).
What Google reviews will tell you is 1) that the ticket sellers are rude, 2) that you have to buy separate tickets for entrance and (entirely optional) use of the elevator, and 3) that there are a lot of steps, very slippery when wet.
In my experience, the ticket seller was as aloof as any other I’ve interacted with thus far, but not actively rude. The ticket policy might be strange but you could have worked it out from earlier reviews, and in any case you might end up paying a total of 85,000VND – 3.30€ – so stop complaining. The only truly relevant part is about the steps.
Taking the elevator avoids only a small number of steps, there are many, many more, hacked out of the rock and polished to a glassy finish by the flip-flops of thousands of tourists. For sure, they would be deadly when wet, so I was glad to visit on a cloudy but dry morning.
What’s to see? Various shrines, pagodas, caves and (if you look closely) some bats. There’s a hint of a suggested route to follow, but to be fair the map doesn’t quite reflect reality, and it would have been helpful if the numbers depicting each waypoint were actually written on the physical signs. No matter, it’s not hard to follow the crowd.
There are lots, and lots, and lots of steps. I’d hit my daily exercise total about 1/6th of the way around, and significantly overshot my “average flights of stairs” daily value. It was exhausting but interesting; I’m just so glad it wasn’t a hot and sunny day.
Laos tomorrow
It’s my last day in Vietnam. Tomorrow morning I’ll fly to Luang Prabang in Laos, a country I hadn’t intended to visit, but has been highly recommended. That’s the great thing about no-plans travel, I can switch it up whenever I fancy.
Photo Dump
I took a lot of photos on my Canon camera and that’s charging right now so I’ll create a separate gallery when I download them. For now, here’s some from my phone.
