June 26, 2019 – The bus to Ninh Binh was entertaining! We nearly tipped trying to get onto a vehicle-worthy ferry boat from Cat Ba to the mainland. Did you know coffee could come in a can? We got a few of these and a SPAM sandwich on the ferry, and it hit the spot. In preparation for a long bus ride, we downloaded ‘Kong: Skull Island’ the night before, because it had lots of scenes from Vietnam, in particular, Cat Ba Island and Halong Bay. It was GOOD! I won’t spoil it for you. Also, during the bus ride, I investigated the whop whop whop bird. Turns out, it was a Greater Coucal, a black crow-sized bird with brown wings. Definitely very mischievous-looking.
We arrived in Tam Coc, Ninh Binh (Ning Bing), Vietnam in the early afternoon. It was SMOKING hot. Also, it was like a terrestrial Halong Bay with big limestone mountains jutting out of the flat rice-patty-strewn valley. First things first, we need lunch. Noe found a highly-rated family restaurant called “Family Restaurant.” Noe ordered his favourite – Beef Pho – and I ordered Pineapple Chicken and a Mango smoothie – DELICIOUS! The hostess was very nice. When she found out we were from Canada, she spoke to us in nearly perfect French (I actually wouldn’t know, because I don’t speak French, but it sounded good). She offered to help us figure out the trains from Ninh Binh to Hue.
After a lovely lunch and interaction with Gia, the hostess, we decided to check into our cave room (Yes, I booked us a room in a cave). Noe and I had to walk through narrow trails between rice patties to get to the Tam Coc Homestay. We were greeted with brand new insanely cute puppies, and then were brought to our cave.
Staying in a cave was super neat…this must be what it felt like to be a cave woman, except with proper beds, proper toilet, proper shower, proper air conditioning, proper lockable door, and proper internet. If we didn’t have air conditioning, it would feel quite claustrophobic. There was a resident cricket chirping from a crack in the rock, little antennae poking out. I made an attempt at his life, but he escaped and Noe pleaded for mercy. I obliged, but at least I had ear plugs – Noe didn’t and would have to live with the loud and annoying chirps in the night. After settling in we went for a free Vietnamese Mojito advertised as a “Get one – Free one” Mojito between 6-8pm. Unfortunately, we misunderstood the meaning, which was actually “Buy one -Get one free” haha oops. They were nothing to brag about…lacked mint…lacked lime…lots of liquor to make up for it though.
At dusk, we walked into the rice patty trails towards what we thought was a bat cave 5 minutes from the homestay. Small things jumped into the grass or water on the side of the trail as we walked. Didn’t get a chance to see them as they were fast! Bats were flying all over the place hunting insects. Then the wind picked up, and the sky darkened even more. We heard a shrieking sound that was akin to a barn owl call, but when I looked up to see where it was coming from, the shape was as big as an owl, but flew like a bat. It was a MASSIVE bat. When it called, many similar calls responded back from caves in the mountains surrounding the valley. I think it was signalling the coming storm and to take cover. Eerily, there were no more bats hunting insects…they retreated to where they came from, and a light flared in the distance, lighting up the mountains – LIGHTNING! Noe and I tried calling to the bat by making a SHHHHHHSSSSSsssss sound – it responded, and flew back over to investigate. I am pretty sure it was saying “Get back to your cave, idiot! Can’t you see a storm is coming?!” The lightning was indeed getting more aggressive, though was very far away because we could not hear thunder. As the lightning flared, wind and rain picked up around us. We looked down the dark path, and were surprised to see little beads of light flittering around. How fitting that we would see lightning bugs during a lightning storm! We had our fill of lightning for the night, and retired to our cave – like mama bat said we should.
It was dark dark night in that dark dark cave. We slept like hibernating bats (though thankfully not upside-down).
June 27, 2019 – Exploring around Tam Coc.
We got a late start to the day – it didn’t help that sunlight couldn’t enter our cave to signal waking time! I woke up on the wrong side of the cave that morning and was very irritable that we were late in getting on with the day. Breakfast was also sub-par (a measly bun with egg) which further put me in a mood. I am very much a food-driven person… After breakfast, we went back to the Family Restaurant to leave our big backpacks and rent a motorbike from Gia. By the time we hit the road, it was 1:30/2pm ish. We also had to put gas in the motorbike, and followed Gia’s directions to the gas station, which we though was a local guy with a bucket of waterbottles filled with gas. He wanted to charge us 50 000 vnd per litre (that’s $3 cad per litre!!!). Of course we figured this out after he put in $15 worth of gas…and we were like -no no no no no…take it back. We put him on the phone with Gia who came to rescue us and take us to the actual gas station. She bought us some gas, and we were on our way – finally! First stop was the Mua Caves. On the turn-off to the caves, a man with a whistle stopped us saying we had to park our bike there for 20 000 vnd. Fine, we did, as we figured this is what everyone had to do. But as we walked the kilometre to the caves, there were more and more places close by to park your bike for cheaper! Even for free! The guy made himself seem like an authority with his whistle, making us walk and waste our time and money. Finally, we made it to the gate, and they were asking for 120 000 vnd each. Noe wasn’t convinced we should pay, and we should just go somewhere else, like the bird garden that I wanted to see. But I was already irritated that it was late afternoon and we hadn’t seen anything yet. So we paid, Noe had a beer to relax as he was also irritated. It was hot, and when we looked for the proclaimed Mua caves, there was a just a tiny cave with a well and tiger statue. I didn’t even take a picture of it, it was so disappointing. What the heck?! We wanted to see ACTUAL caves with BIG bats! ugh. So instead, what we paid for, was photo ops and a steep stair climb to a lookout point.
We found an actual cave and were satisfied to leave now. On our way out, we saw some other unsuspecting people getting ready to park their bikes at the place we parked. We told them to keep going all the way to the caves and they’ll find free parking there. We got our pay back for being herded into this parking place and being shmucked out of our Vietnamese dong. I guess some people make a more honest living in Vietnam than others.
Next stop – we decided to check out the Trang An River. Didn’t really feel like doing a river boat tour, but instead rode the motorbike along it all the way to the ancient Hoa Lu village (distinct from Hoa Lo hell hole from Hanoi) which sits on the Trang An River. As we neared Hoa Lu, many people tried to stop us with their hand waving, baton waving, and whistles, offering us parking. But we knew better this time…so we whizzed passed them all until we got to the gate. As Noe was trying to pay for tickets to Hoa Lu, three very old ladies (and I mean this in the best possible way) in their pointed Vietnamese hats surrounded him, trying to sell their fruits (why does this sound so wrong?). He bought two bags of pineapple, and had to say no to the third lady, because she came late to the selling party, and honestly, you can only have so much pineapple at one time. The third lady started cursing in Vietnamese when Noe kindly declined – I hoped it wasn’t some kind of magical Vietnamese curse…but now that I think of it, maybe it was (more on that later). The plastic bags of pineapple were crawling with ants, so I didn’t partake in it.
As we suspected, once we had our tickets, we could drive our motorbike ALL the way inside and around Hoa Lu (haha, we would have been suckers if we parked half a kilometre away). It was super hot, so first thing we did once inside was strip to our knickers and go for a dip in the Trang An. We saw other children swimming not too far away, and steps led right down into the water – so it must be fine. It was very refreshing, although Noe slipped and scraped his leg and feet pretty bad. Curse? Maybe. He hobbled out of there after a good swim, and then we ventured to the little temple and pagoda. There was a lush courtyard inside the temple. This temple was dedicated to a king…which was odd, as most temples are for some other deity or buddha that we have seen.
Hoa Lu wasn’t just an ancient abandoned village – it was a bustling lively village, with people that live and work there. We drove all over the lush back roads and through the busy town.
It was getting late, so we made our way to the other side of Tam Coc to try and catch a bit of the bird garden before it closed. Unfortunately, we ran out gas on the highway (Curse again? Maybe). A nice lady stopped her motorbike, and called a number for a local person to come and bring us gas. Sure enough, 10 minutes later, a man came on an electric bike with his nifty cart of gasoline, and gave us one litre for 3$…ok, we figured this is fair for bringing us gas when we were stranded on the highway.
Back on the road again with enough gas, we hurry towards the bird garden. It’s dusk already, and I’m starting to feel disheartened because this was ultimately what I wanted to see in Tam Coc – Ninh Binh. Sure enough, when we get there, the gate person tells us politely that we have to turn around and he hopes we have a fun night. Curse? It is really starting to feel like this third fruit selling old lady might have ruined our day with whatever she said in a malicious tone. At least we saw a cool sunset.
After a somewhat disappointing day, one thing could really pick up my mood – COMFORT FOOD! A good ol’ hamburger would do the trick, or a pineapple chicken burger, fries and a mango smoothie at a touristy restaurant. We made it back to Family Restaurant to return the bike very late (9:30pm), which was a bit stressful for me, because we had to catch a train!
So I might have neglected to mention before, the whole reason we were trying to fit everything into one day, is because we had to catch the night train from Ninh Binh to Hue at 10:30pm. We grabbed a Grab, and got to Ninh Binh train station. No one checked our tickets or anything to get onto the platform, which I thought was odd. Maybe they will check them on the train – they didn’t. Curse again – Noe and I had an argument on the platform, didn’t say good night and didn’t see each other until the next morning because our train cabins were so far away from each other. Noe was practically in the caboose, and I was up near first class (don’t know how that happened..completely random when I ordered tickets online, I swear. They were the last two beds!).
On the train, everyone was scrambling to get into their assigned cabin. I was trying to get to the other side of the train car where my cabin was, when an American shouted, “There’s no more beds here! Move back!” I was terrified…I didn’t want to have to sleep on the floor in the tiny hallway…there must be a mistake. I tried to talk to a train attendant, who brought me to my cabin, opened the door, and it was dark inside with one upper bunk vacant – YES that’s mine! There was a family of 4 locals (two young kids and two parents) sharing 3 beds. The little girl was speaking all of her best English at me, including “Hello” “How are you?” “What you doing?” as her parents look at me and give me an embarrassed smile. I tucked myself into bed and started watching something, as I couldn’t sleep with all of the excitement of the day.
At midnight, I decided to go see if Noe was okay in his cabin. Crossing 8 train cars, I finally made it to Noe’s cabin. The halls were dead, except for the night train attendants. I ask the train attendant to please let me check Noe’s cabin to make sure he was okay. I pointed at my engagement ring, and he understood. He held a finger to his lips when I was about to knock, and just opened the door for me. Sure enough, there was Noe, sleeping tightly as a bug with his shoes on in the top bunk. I touched his leg, with no response from him. I thanked the train attendant, closed the door and returned made the long trek back to my cabin at the front of the train.
Ok, time to sleep. Even with ear plugs, I heard strange sounds from the train. Eventually, I got to sleep. Only to be rudely awakened by super loud music from the cabin speaker at 6:30am. I guess we would start making passenger stops soon, so all of the guests had to be up and ready to jump off when they’re supposed to. I took this opportunity to go find Noe again (I really love him, because I made the trek to the back of the train TWICE in one trip for him). This time, I woke him up. The three local girls in his cabin were already awake and were very nice. They offered me candy, as Noe woke up and got his stuff organized. From there, we left his stuff in my cabin, and went to the very very front of the train, where Noe had a hunch that there was a common dining room. On the way, we bought some train sausages, rice and SPAM for a small breakfast. Sure enough, there was a dining area…and it seemed like few people knew about it, because with a packed train, there were still at least 3 of 6 vacant tables. We ordered iced coffee, enjoyed our breakfast, and watched the scenery go by through the big windows. As we were watching, it looked like there were fields and fields of marijuana growing everywhere. Marijuana is deathly illegal in Vietnam…why is it grown here to such a huge extent? (No picture unfortunately)
Soon enough, we made it to Hue, Vietnam… No one announced that we were at Hue. We had to rely on Google Maps to show when we were approaching our stop, and then get ready to hop off as soon as the train was in the station. Easy peasy. We arrived in Hue, another big city in Vietnam along the coast.
Laramie Travels the World 