The night train was relatively uneventful although we learned another lesson which is to never book a cabin over the wheels (berths 1-8 and 22-28). We didn't sleep a lot but we arrived on time in Ninh Binh at 8:05 the next am where we were immediately accosted by 10 hotel salesmen (and more taxis) trying to get us into their rooms. Jen had already selected a place and we brushed off most of them by saying we already had a booking. The guy with our hotel walked us down the street to it.
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| Shawn on the soft sleeper |
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| None the worse for wear despite little or no sleep - except for Rachel who slept like a log... and looks like she is still asleep! The joys of Gravol! |
We chucked our stuff into the room, grabbed some breakfast and then went down to the bus station to determine how we'd get to Haiphong to take the ferry over to Cat Ba in Ha Long Bay in 2 days. Local bus was the only option and I wasn't having anything to do with that. We ran into a cab driver that offered to take us out to Tam Coc and a few other sites for about $25 so we agreed and set up to meet him back at the hotel in an hour when Jen and I picked up the kids (who were doing their iPod things back in the room).
Tam Coc was a neat little village where you jump on these little punts and a husband/wife team row you through a series of caverns through a river valley filled with Karsts. It was very beautiful but was marred somewhat by the free enterprise loving Vietnamese who had quite a system going. First they'd row you to the end where a dozen or so ladies on boats were there trying to sell you drinks or snacks and when you'd refuse, they'd try to guilt you into buying same for the rowers! We'd read about this scheme and apparently the husband/wife would then return the drinks for 50% of the money. I saw one of the ladies giving Jen/Shawn's husband rower money for bringing them to him.
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| They row with their bare feet and no straps to hold them on to the oars... just the way they wrap their feet around the paddles. It is something to watch |
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| The Three Billy Goats Gruff... we did not see the troll under the bridge |
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| They had cemetery monuments all over the flat land |
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| Rice paddies over every usable inch |
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| The beginnings of a cave |
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| See the temples up top... watch for later. |
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| on zoom. |
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| Yup, we are going into yet another cave |
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| Not too long or impressive |
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| I guess they do not have laws against rowing with cell phones... this one cracked me up! |
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| A couple of the local ladies working the rice paddies |
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| Rachel gave it a try |
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| Add caption |
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| Ignoring the sales pitches |
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| OK, let us see if we can sell something to someone else! |
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| She makes it look effortless |
After that, we turned around and headed back to a lonely spot where the lady rower would pull out an assortment of crafts and try her hand at captive selling. Again, we were on to that trick and politely refused. We were about 50' from the dock when both boats started saying "tip please!". I really would have liked to have enough (some?) Vietnamese to tell them, they'd be a lot more successful if they didn't do such a hard sell. It just got us annoyed when we would have rather been looking at the beautiful scenery.
After that, it was back into the car to climb up yet another mountain over looking the river we'd just been up and down. There was a small temple at the top for our reward. Surprisingly, climbing isn't bothering me as much anymore. I suspect that it is because it's bloody cold (22 degrees or so) up here!
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| Now that we saw it from the ground, we have to climb up it! |
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| Way up it! |
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| About one third the way up (an excuse to take a breather for me!) |
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| Getting close now.... |
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| We are getting up there now... that river is what we were on. See the boat in the top right |
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| These little monsters made it without breaking a sweat! |
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| And proud of it! |
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| I was just bloody happy to be at the top! |
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| Oreos for their reward |
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| And back down we go.... |
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| On the ground again. |
Then we went to a local carnival that happened to be on at two temples in an old village. We were the only white people out of a crowd of 10,000 or so but felt very comfortable in the crowd. Then it was back to Ninh Binh where we asked the driver to let us out in a local market so the girls could do some shopping. Turns out this was a real local market and only had stuff that the locals would buy. We did a short walk through it and then back to the hotel to prepare for our trip to Cat Ba and Ha Long Bay that we'd been looking forward to for months.
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| The local fair |
