Finding the rural Vietnam

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So Francesca and I had decided to take a small step off the far too beaten track and make a stop over in Ninh Binh. There were two particular attractions that we were interested in: Cuc Phuong National Park and Tam Coc, which has been called the Halong Bay of the rice fields. There were logistical challenges in this plan and neither of us could have done it alone, but together we were ready to face the 4.30am drop off by the highway. The bus was going to Hanoi and we were the only ones to do this stopover.

I was mentally prepared to sit a couple of hours in the rain, shivering of cold, waiting for the morning light before we could find a guesthouse. We were pleasantly surprised when there were even two guesthouse owners waiting for us with their torches. It must be really hard to get business in these more remote areas! We chose to go with Mr Xian who seemed to be a nice man. We liked his guesthouse, the price was right, and he even made us some coffee and gave some travel tips before we went to sleep for few more hours. What bliss to sleep in the bed after the bus bench!

In the morning we met Matthias, a Swede, at the hotel, and in no time persuaded him to go with us to the national park on the following day. It doesn't harm to have a man in the group when you're going to the wild places! He also drove the motorbike so in that way we needed to hire only one motorbike taxi and saved a nice pile of dongs (the Vietnamese currency).

First we had an afternoon to spend at Tac Coc and surrounding countryside. I had planned to cycle the 9 km way there, but Mr Xian convinced us that we would be missing the essential thing, the beautiful countryside back roads, which are too difficult to orientate without a map and rough for the tires. As the weather was still rainy and about 50 % of my cycling trips in South East Asia had ended up with a flat tire, most recently on the previous day in Hue, I agreed to take a motorbike.

After hard bargaining (Francesca is a champion and tries to teach me too) we set off to the trip. The
countryside was remarkably beautiful: limestone formations rising from the rice fields. Even photos don't do justice to this sight. Our first stop was at Hoa Lu, the remains of the temples dedicated to King Dinh and King Le, the two heroes who lived in 10th century and chose Hoa Lu to build the citadel of the capital city. The current temples are built on the old foundation of their original palaces in 11-12th centuries and restored in 17th century. The first one was quite nice with lots of interesting details - and the second one nearly identical to it. The most interesting part was to see how the locals behave in the temple, praying and leaving offerings. Unfortunately I needed to escape quite briskly from the second temple as there was an old man who wanted to put flowers behind my ears as a gift. Then he was trying to sniff the flowers bringing his face FAR too close - I don't know what was his intentions but I though it was better to leave the premises rather than find out.

After a coffee break we continued to Tam Coc, the highlight of the day. In there the limestone
formations rise from the river and are surrounded by the lush green rice fields. Three of the formations have enormous caves in them and you can hire a boat, with a rower of course, and go down the river and through the caves. That took two hours but was so wonderful that it felt like much shorter time. The Vietnamese doesn't miss any opportunity to try to sell you something - the local people row to you their boats filled with snacks and drinks and on the way back another of rowers in your boat try to sell you handcrafts. And when the trip is over, before you have even opened your wallet and started to think about the tip the rowers are asking for extra money. Francesca refused to pay any tip and mine wasn't apparently big enough as we didn't get even a good-bye from the people we had been joking with for the past couple of hours.

Before returning to the guesthouse we still visited a Chinese temple and I climbed on the limestone mountain from where I could see the whole area. Unfortunately it was still raining and misty so I couldn't see as far as you could on a clear day. There isn't anything special to do in the city of Ninh Binh, not even restaurants apart from the ones in the guesthouses, so we had dinner at our own one and then used internet cafe for a couple of hours. Those you can find from nearly any town - the quality of the connection is then a different story.

However, early on the following morning we were off to the place with no internet or mobile network. The drive to the Cuc Phuong National Park was again pretty wonderful, we saw similar limestone formations in the middle of the rice paddies than on the previous day, just the weather was sunny for a change. At the gate of the national park we stopped at the Endangered Primate Rescue Centre. The monkeys were so funny to look at; you could watch them for ages. Particularly gibbons were really funny with their long arms and legs. My favourites were two baby monkeys though, one and three weeks old. The smaller one was so curious, constantly looking at us behind his mothers arm (it didn't leave its mothers lap). The other one was learning to jump and looked so comical hopping around and falling all the time. As my photos are so rubbish (we weren't let too close to the cages) have a look at http://www.primatecenter.org/

We drove another 20 kilometres to the centre of the national park. It felt immediately that we came to another world - the landscape changed to be foresty and hilly and we drove through dozens of herds of butterflies. In the centre we booked the overpriced but decent accommodation and shoot off for a short trek in the park. Apparently the botanical richness of the forest is impressive including some patches of primeval forest, but the variety in flora and fauna didn't make any difference to us ignorant tourists as we didn't recognise even the most common plants or trees...

There was only one restaurant in the national park centre, so we really didn’t have a choice. Their menu was quite limited: fried rice, fried noodles or steamed rice, all either with vegetables or pork. I hardly ever eat pork (except ham in Christmas) but given the variety of other options decided to go for it. Funnily enough we got a plate of two different meats. The other could be identified as pork but the other was something else, much darker meat. Beef it wasn’t as we have asked for it and they said they didn’t have it. There were lots of cats and dogs running around and we were trying to ask them if one of their pals had gone missing, but all remained silent…

After an early night (the generator was switched off at ten so all you could do after that was read in the torch light) we woke up early and went back to the restaurant for breakfast. The menu remained more or less the same: noodle soup, fried noodles or fried rice. At least they had nescafe to relieve our coffee cravings. After that Mathias asked if I wanted to learn to drive the motorbike - there wouldn’t be a better place to train than the very quiet road to the park’s gate.

We went through the basics in the yard of the restaurant and after a while I shoot off, only to realise a few minutes later that I had dropped my wallet in the midst of all that excitement. I had just put in my pocket and it being a big one had probably dropped right away. We were looking for it for two hours and came to the conclusion that someone must have taken it - there were a few Vietnamese people in the restaurant and some foreign tourists as well. Anyone could have seen the show and just pick the wallet up as soon as I dropped it. Unfortunately there was quite a bit of money in it this time, as I had just been to the ATM on the previous day, and I also lost two of my most important credit cards. Well, I can only curse my own stupidity. Being so extra careful for months I let myself feel safe there in the middle of nowhere for a while and I pay for it immediately! On the other hand I'm inclined to think that the reason for the incident was to save me some bigger accident - driving on someone or injuring myself with the motorbike.

After I decided to finish the search operation, none of us were really in the mood for another trek anymore. So we drove three on the motorbike to the gate and called for the motorbike taxi. Luckily
the rangers did let me to use their internet and I could call the bank to cancel my cards. On the way back Mathias and Francesca decided to go to see a floating village, but all I wanted to go and use the internet and get my financials sorted out. Fortunately I had still my Finnish visa and another English debit card left and I can live with those two. The only thing I can’t do is pay things in the internet, and that causes problems when booking flight tickets or e.g. trying to download money to my Skype account.

In spite of that little episode we all considered the trip to Ninh Binh very good and decided, from Matthias's suggestion, to travel to Halong Bay independently as opposed to attend an organised tour from Hanoi. The tour is usually the cheapest way to see the Halong Bay but you can also hear people complain a lot about the things gone wrong so the chances that you get the best out of the trip is to do it by yourself. So we decided to meet up in Hai Phong in two days: Francesca and I went up to Hanoi to sort out my visa extension and Matthias stayed in Ninh Binh to see Tam Coc.

There hasn’t been a reason to complain about the difficulty in traveling in Vietnam even before, but the way we got to Hanoi is the smoothest of all. We just told at the guesthouse that we would like to take the bus around 7 am and even before we had finished our coffees there was a minivan waiting for us. It whisked us to the bus station, parked right next to the bus and we hopped in it and the bus started to move immediately. In all time we didn’t touch our luggage or take more than five steps.

It was such a shame that my time in Hanoi was so short (all that time is Saigon…), only one and a half days. Even from that time several hours was wasted for my visa extension problem. Getting my passport back seemed to take much longer than I had expected and I wasn’t quite sure if I could travel to Halong Bay and Sapa without it. Different travel agents gave me lots of dissimilar information but in the end I was convinced that I could stay at the hotels with the photocopy of the passport, just the overnight boat trips might be a problem.

So I didn’t see a single museum in Hanoi, but I spent hours walking on the streets of the fascinating Old Quarter. It is a very lively place, and despite so many hotels being based there you can see local people living and working on the streets. The Old Quarter is traditionally a crafts area. In the old days the members of the each guild worked and lived together creating a cooperative system for transporting merchandise to the designated streets in the business quarter. Each of 36 streets has been named by a different guild. Many of those guilds have now disappeared, but the others such as one trading the silk products live strong. Because storekeepers were taxed according to the width of their storefront, storage and living space moved to the back of the buildings. Consequently, the long and narrow buildings were called "tube houses." Typical measurements for such houses are 3 meters wide by 60 meters long.

In the evening we went to see a Hanoi must-do, the water puppet show, which is an art form unique to North Vietnam. I didn’t know what to expect as I knew it would be all in Vietnamese. Anyway, first the traditional Vietnamese orchestra, clad in very colourful way presented themselves and the original instruments they were using through a few songs. Then the puppets appeared, and the orchestra sang in background songs which tell the story being acted out by the puppets. The stories tell of day-to-day life in rural Vietnam, legends and national history and folk tales that are told by grandparents to their grandchildren. The stories are short and easy to understand and sometimes have a humorous twist.

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Photos

The gibbons family
Males are black, females yellow

Mathias and Francesca
Obviously enjoying the ride

The rowing lady
They often use their feet instead of hands for rowing - much less consuming

View from the top
Down there we were rowing too a bit earlier