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Published: July 10th 2006
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Ask Steve how to get from the Ninh Binh Railway Station to the Xuan Hoa Guesthouse, and he wouldn't be able to tell you. It wasn't because he was really boozed getting off the train, nor was it because my sense of direction is better than his (no deleting that Stevie!), but because he was practically delirious from a fever that suddenly came on whilst we were on the train.
Our train journey from Hue to Ninh Binh was to take 12 hours. So we settled into our soft seats amongst a carriage full of Vietnamese. As usual, we were more interesting than the TV to watch and observe on the journey, but we had got used to that a long time ago. In fact, one girl, probably about 9 years old, found us so fascinating that she kneeled on her seat for most of the 12 hour journey to look back at us. It made it a little hard to eat and sleep with someone staring at you, but she seemed a sweet enough girl so we didn't mind. The scenery was fabulous, so that distracted us.
Anyway, about 2 hours before arriving at Ninh Binh, Steve started
to get cold and decided to put his fleece on. Anyone who knows Steve would realise this was odd behaviour. It must have been 26 degrees, and certainly not cold. Then he started to sweat. A university student who got on the train close to Ninh Binh remarked that he might have "bird disease" (yes, the Vietnamese have quite a sense of humour).
Soon we arrived at Ninh Binh. We had been recommended a hotel to stay at by Millsy, and the card he had given us had a map on the back of it. It looked really close to the Station so we decided to walk to it. Meanwhile, Steve's state of mind and body was gradually deteriorating. Fortunately we were with Pascal, Sonja and Sarah so we plodded on in the rain and eventually found the hotel which turned out to be about 2 km walk. Poor Stevie. We checked into the first room we were shown and Steve passed out. I have no idea what his temperature was, but nothing could bring it down. I have never felt a fever like it. He couldn't even raise his head to drink water. Sonja gave us some magic
Austrian pills to get the fever down and I kept a cold towel on his head all night. I have to say, it was a wee bit worrying as Steve and I hadn't been taking malaria tablets, so I was thinking the worst.
The next morning, Steve was fine. The fever left as soon as it came. Really quite amazing. However, he was left with a VERY bad tum, whereby he couldn't walk 20 metres without going to the toilet! So heading out on the back of motorbikes sight-seeing was out for the day. Sonja, Pascal and Sarah headed off by themselves. We did, however, manage to walk a bit through Ninh Binh town, stopping at various businesses for Steve to go to the toilet. We soon realised that Millsy had been right about this place, it was incredibly friendly; everybody said hello, guided us to places they thought we were heading to, and not one person hassled us to buy something from them. Very refreshing indeed.
We were sorry that we had missed the sights of Ninh Binh as we were due to head of to Halong Bay the next day with the others. We decided to
return before leaving Vietnam. I have to say that the lovely Mr Xuan and his wife made Steve's stay most comfortable. Not only did they have the most comfortable beds we have experienced do far on our trip, but Mrs Xuan made rice soup with ginger especially for Steve's poor tum. Xuan himself would take every opportunity to rub Steve's tum better as well. Quite amusing, if you weren't Steve.
So, the next day we headed off to Halong Bay to see the amazing limestone karsts. We took a local bus from Ninh Binh to Halong City , and witnessed a serious bout of road rage by our bus driver. He must have been doing at least 100km/h when he saw another bus company's bus ahead; he stepped on the pedal and went even faster to overtake. Of course, the other bus accelerated so that he couldn't overtake, so our man decided to try to ram the other bus off the road!!!! All at over 100kmh! A few minutes later, both buses swerved off the road and had a big shouting fest on the side of the road, with lots of pointed fingers and chest-bouncing. All very exciting, but
also a bit scary.We think it might have all been about who "owned" the route between the two cities.
Anyway, we got to Halong City in record time and then had to wait four hours before we could board our boat. We had booked a 3 day tour with one night on a "traditional Vietnamese boat" and one night on Cat Ba Island. It didn't take long to sail out to the limestone karsts. There are apparently 1969 of them in total (according to Vietnamses folklore, 1969 heavenly dragons came down to Earth and ound it so beautiful at Halong Bay, that they decided not to leave. So each karst represents one of the dragons).
The karsts were really the highlight of the three day trip. We were also taken thorough a tour of a beautiful cave but it was a little ruined by the metre high penguin liiter bins (yes, odd as we don't believe penguins even exist in Vietnam) and the bright lighting. We did see a beautiful sunset from the boat and also sunrise as it was too hot to sleep below deck.
That day we headed to Cat Ba island where we actually
did an awesome trek up the mountain. Everyone in the group agreed that they had never sweated so much in their lives. The scenery was pretty good too! We entertained ourselves at the beach that afternoon, which reminded me of Big Wave Bay in Hong Kong. Steve and spent most of the time playing in the surf; a bit of bodysurfing as the waves were quite big, and a star jumping (when a big wave would come along, Steve would give my bottom a big push into the air whereby I would go flying above the wave - great fun!!) It was a very interesting beach for people-watching - as it was Sunday there were hepas of locals (they only go to the beach as the sun starts to go behind the moutnain though, so as not to darken their skins). Out of nowhere, a score of photogrpahers with manual cameras appeared to take photos of families posing seriously at the water's edge. We assumed they would later develop the films and send them on to the families.
Cat Ba town itself is pretty uninspiring and can look a bit like a Chinese version of Blackpool when the Christmas
Lights are on so no stories from there. The next day we headed off to Hanoi, where we would plan our trip to Sapa.
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