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Published: June 12th 2013
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The other side trip that I had planned to do from Hanoi was to a place called Tam Coc (no sniggering please!) which has some similarities to Halong Bay, except its huge limestone rock formations jutted out of rice paddies on the side of the Ngo Dong River, instead of out of the sea as at Halong. It actually bears a remarkable similarity to Guilin in China, except the Ngo Dong is much narrower than the Li River in Guilin, and we were transported in row boats rather than mechanised steamers.
Given my limited ability to move around, I had succumbed to the prospect of doing a day package trip straight after arrival in Hanoi off the overnight train from Sapa. However, the hotel screwed up my booking and the tour left without me. With not many other feasible options available for me on my last day in Hanoi, given my limited mobility, I decided to chase down the tour, as I knew they were first visiting the nearby ancient capital of Hoa Lu. So, to the amusement of the staff at my hotel, I was given directions and took off to get there instead by public transport. This comprised
first a motor-bike taxi through central Hanoi for the 10kms to the bus station, on which I almost shat myself as it weaved at high speed in and out of the surrounding bikes, cars and busses, not always travelling on the same side of the road as them either! From there it was a trip on a local bus to Ninh Binh for a couple of hours, in which I got engaged in a number of non-verbal ‘conversations’ with a few locals who were clearly bemused at sharing their bus with a foreigner. Finally, I had another 10km ride to Tam Coc on the back of a bike taxi, but this time we were well out of the big city, so the traffic was less and he tended to stay on his own side of the road.
Once again, despite the hassles to get there, it was well worth the trip. Apart from the incredibly beautiful scenery along the river, on which we were rowed by locals for a couple of hours, the highlight was perhaps the rowing itself. While I had previous experienced the ‘leg-rowers’ at Inle Lake in Burma, I had no idea that we would be
rowed for the whole two hours by locals (ladies as well as men), who would lean back in their seats and row with both feet. This must be a reasonably recent development as there was no mention of it in my guidebook, and in fact a photo in that shows the boats being guided down the river by locals standing up using a long pole. As well as the interesting views of the pinnacles and of locals working in the rice paddies on the side of the river, we travelled through three low-lying caves which added to the spectacle. I was fortunate enough to ‘scrounge’ my way onto one of the package tours, so not only did I share a fascinating couple of hours on the boat with a Russian guy with a very chequered background called Alex, but I was driven all the way back to my hotel in Hanoi at the end of the day. All in all, a great way to finish my brief stint in Vietnam.
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