My third consecutive years visiting Vietnam gave me an opportunity to tick off the last two, Ho Citadel and Trang An, to complete Vietnamese World Heritage Sites. Conveniently both sites are located near the city of Ninh Binh, just 2 hours from Hanoi, and many tour agencies offered transportation service. After 4 hours from Hanoi, our driver, who rarely comprehended any English word and relied on google translation app on his mobile, took me and my friends in front of the imposing ruined three arched gates of Ho Citadel.

At first glance, the site was extremely underwhelming, there was nothing except the gate in the middle of nowhere of endless rice fields. Fortunately, that the gate was really photogenic, and the size and engineering craftsmanship of the gate were quite impressive. We climbed to the top of the gate and found beautiful view of sea of golden almost harvestable rice fields, and from the top we could see and understand the citadel square form and its surrounding Feng Shui element of mountain and river. We spend only 30 minutes on Ho Citadel as there was nothing much to see. Its small museum also closed without explanation, and we decided not to disturb locals who were harvesting rice in the middle of citadel.

Currently there are 3 citadels in the list of Vietnamese World Heritage Sites, Hue, Ho and Thang Long, the differences of these sites in terms of citadel gate and layout are hardly noticeable, so after having seen Hue and Thang Long, Ho Citadel offered nothing new and made the visit totally not worthwhile. Fortunately, that the photogenic gate and the view of golden rice fields saved my visit to be quite memorable.