I wasn't looking forward to our night train from Hue to Ninh Binh; India has traumatised me and all I could think of were the rats, the cockroaches, the smell of urine, the overcrowding and the dozens of Indian eyes peering at me through the dark above handlebar moustaches.
The Vietnamese train, on the other hand, was lovely: fresh bedding, a six bed berth with a door that closed, a nice table by the window. It was even clean. We'd just settled into a nice game of scrabble when the man sitting opposite us decided he'd use the 10 hour journey to learn English. He rudely interrupted our game and started writing random words on my piece of paper. For the next 30 minutes I was completely ignored whilst the stranger pestered Ric for pronunciation tips. When he gestured to me and asked Ric my name I got so cross I had to go for a walk. Sexist scrabble botherer!!
To top it off, we were told the train would arrive in Ninh Binh at 5am but it arrived two hours early, leaving me and Ric sitting in the train station in the middle of the night, being bitten by mosquitoes, waiting for the sun to rise. Not the best start to our day.
90km south of Hanoi, Ninh Binh is home to some of the worst hotels and restaurants in the whole of Vietnam. We dragged our tired selves around several river-front hotels that could have passed for derelict buildings, before finally finding a place to rest.
Fortunately, for what it lacks in accommodation and food, Ninh Binh makes up for it in natural geographical wonders.
First we took a boat ride through caves and around limestone rocks at Tam Coc, where our skillful guide rowed the boat with his feet!
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| View down over Tam Coc from Mua Cave. |
We were up early the next day to explore the incredible landscape on bicycles. First stop was Bich Dong temple, built into the side of a mountain with pitch black caves full of bats and Buddhist shrines. At the top there was a sign that says "do not climb up". We learned the hard way that the sign was right; the 100m climb was too difficult in our flip flops and we arrived at the rocky summit drenched in sweat, to find the only patch of shade was home to a nest of wasps.
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| Outside Bich Dong. |
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| Cave shrine, Bich Dong. |
From the temple we continued along a dusty back road lined with rice paddies to Han Mua; another cave temple at the foot of 500 steps. The labourious climb was worth it for the panoramic views down to Tam Coc and out across Ninh Binh, however; I was not impressed with the Japanese tourist sat at the pagoda at the top playing a horribly out of tune Asian wind instrument! Talk about disrupting the peace.
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| View Ninh Binh from Mua Cave. |
To end the day we took a three hour boat trip around Trang An where we traveled through yet more impressive caves. The karst landscape is really beautiful but once again there was somebody to upset my peace and quiet; this time a large, over-excitable Vietnamese family who shrieked and screamed and cheered their way along the river, having raucous boat races. Ric said I was being a killjoy but he soon changed his tune when the father of the family asked Ric to pay his portion of a tip to the boat driver!
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| Trang An landscape. |
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| Trang An caves. |
Ninh Binh has some amazing scenery, well worth a visit but the town itself isn't very pleasant. We left after two nights with a mild case of food poisoning as a souvenir.
How to get to...
All the caves! All the sights in Ninh Binh are within cycling distance, although hired motorbikes are probably preferable as the sights are quite spread out (about a 30km round trip), and the boat trips are long (Tam Coc 2 hours, Trang An 3 hours).
We stayed at...
Queen Mini Hotel. For $8/£4.80 the room was much nicer than anything else we'd seen in Ninh Binh. All the hotels along the waterfront are disgusting. The services in the Queen Mini Hotel were very overpriced compared to other local agents.
