Central Vietnam (Hoi An - Hue - Ninh Binh)

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Upon arrival in Hoi An at 6am, we were mobbed by touts. We managed to shake most of them off and go in search of a room for some much needed rest. Arriving early has its benefits, as it means you get a free choice of basically every hotel because sooner or later someone will check out. We managed to bag a nice but cheap room with a pool and massive breakfast which was ready for us an hour after our arrival. After a somewhat long sleep we set out to explore the town.

Hoi An, as we soon learnt, is very touristy. The main attraction is the pretty old town, which now unfortunately just seems to be streets lined with tailors and shops selling tourist junk. Consequently, we felt Hoi An lost a lot of the charm it otherwise had. Not all was lost however, as we were soon to discover how excellent (and cheap) the local food was. As a result, we spent a large portion of time in Hoi An hanging out in the restaurants stuffing our faces with ‘cau lao’, a variety of dumplings and assorted cakes. The pool was also heavily utilised.

On our second day in Hoi An, we rose early to try and check out some of the sights within the old town. At 8am it was already scorching but we pushed on anyway. For fairly steep A$7.50, you can visit one house, one assembly hall, one museum, a cultural performance, the Japanese covered bridge and a place of worship. After visiting everything in about an hour we decided it was not only disappointing but a waste of money. Each sight really was nothing special, the museum was very small and poorly kept, you can see the entirety of the bridge from the outside and the owner of the house pestered us for Australian money for his ‘collection’ (we thought we had left that scam in India!) and seemed quite offended when we told him we had none (which was true... what use do I have for Australian money in Vietnam?!). So we booked our ticket to Hue for the next day and back it was to the pool for the remainder of the day.

A short 3 hour (but with 3 ‘rest stops’ on the way of course) morning bus ride assured our arrival in Hue by lunch time. It appeared once more that taxis didn’t exist in this town, thus a balancing act was needed to be performed to get all our bags (which are now quite numerous) and ourselves onto a motorbike to deliver us to our hotel. Unfortunately shortly after our arrival it started to rain, despite the blue skies a mere hour before, so we booked ourselves in to a motorbike tour for the next day, ate some Indian food and retreated to our room.

Bright and early the following morning, two happy men on motorbikes picked us up. We were even given helmets to wear - a novelty thus far on our travels. So off we went riding through the city streets and then the rice paddies and villages in the Hue countryside, stopping off at several sights on the way including a Japanese covered bridge, a war bunker, a couple of temples/pagodas and the Tomb of Tu Duc (so-so considering the steep entry fee). Motorbikes really are THE way to see Vietnam, especially when teamed with a knowledgeable driver who can point out things on the way and take you through the smaller back streets of the villages, as opposed to just zooming down the highway. It was definitely a fun way to spend the morning.

After lunch before our overnight bus we checked out the Citadel. The Citadel from the outside is an impressive looking structure with an entrance fee to match. Inside however, it is an absolute dump. We were extremely disappointed, as what we found inside was a bare skeleton of what looked like something once worth visiting. Evidently the entry fee was not going into looking after the site, which mostly consist of an overgrown series of fields and gardens, an abandoned construction site and the remains of a giant plastic dragon and rooster (?!!?). We left the Citadel a lot sooner than expected and headed back to our room where we had organised a late checkout (they made us pay half the nights rate and only let us stay for 4 hours extra) to shower and pack before our overnight bus to Ninh Binh.

Unable to find a seat with any of the well known tour companies with only a day’s notice, we had to settle for booking a bus ticket with a random operator down the street. We elected to get a sitting bus rather than a sleeper, mainly because it was cheaper but also because we don’t like the sleepers anyway. We were picked up and dropped at the bus stop which was where things started to turn pear shaped. Being the only foreigners there, we were approached by a ‘helpful’ man who proceeded to tell us that the sitting bus stopped outside of Ninh Binh at 4am in the morning and we wouldn’t be able to get transport into the town at that time in the morning. He also told us the bus wasn’t leaving until a lot later, so instead we should get the sleeper bus which would arrive in Ninh Binh at 7am in the morning and drop us off at our hotel. He insisted that this would be the best deal for us and that all we had to do was pay him $5USD each and we could get the sleeper bus instead.

Now, we aren’t complete muppets and knew he must have been lying about something. Paying an extra $5USD was well in excess of the price it should have cost to get a sleeper and when we questioned several times, he avoided answering. We knew he was lying about the cost of getting the sleeper but couldn’t figure out if he had just made up the bit about the sitting bus not stopping in town. No one around spoke any English, so in the end we decided we would rather cough up the extra cash to make sure we arrived in town, just on the off chance he was telling the truth.

The bus trip was horrible, made only worse by our anger at being ripped off. It wasn’t however until several hours later we realised the full extent of how much we had been scammed (more on that later). Spending most of the trip airborne due to bad roads combined with being seated at the rear of the bus meant not much sleep was actually had and many bruises were gained. It also meant much to my horror, that it was not physically possible to get oneself to the onboard bathroom when I needed to use it. Much to my relief we stopped at a petrol station in the early hours of the morning (a man with a cigarette in his mouth filled up the bus... I was waiting for everything to go BOOM and for it to all be over) where I was finally able to get up and make my way to the bathroom, however it now appeared that the aisles were full of people asleep on the floor of the bus. In a state of absolute desperation I had to clamber my way to the bathroom, stepping on several people in the process and very narrowly missing a baby’s head (how at this stage I was longing for a tourist sleeper bus).

A couple of hours later, Merric and I were bumping up and down in a daze when a man came and poked us and told us we were in Ninh Binh and we had to get off the bus. Very confused as it was still dark, I checked our watch only to find that was in fact 4 in the morning and we were very much NOT in the middle of the town. The man who had scammed us was conveniently no longer on the bus and we were pushed out with 10 seconds notice so much so that I hadn’t even got a chance to pack my stuff and clamber over the millions of people asleep in the aisle before the bus started driving off, Merric outside, me still on board. After some loud yelling on my part the bus stopped to actually let me climb over the people on the ground so as I could get out. It wasn’t until I got off the bus that I realised I had left my small bag with all my money, my camera and both our passports on the bus which was now speeding off into the distance. By some stroke of luck there was a man on a motorbike nearby who happened to speak English who shot off after the bus to make it stop, leaving Merric and I (by this time I was hysterical) alone on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere at 4am. It was at this time it also started to rain... heavily.

Thankfully, 10 minutes later he came back after managing to stop the bus and my bag was returned to me. The man and a friend who he enlisted took us to a hotel which had been recommended to us and were rewarded with a very large tip. The owners of the hotel who turned out to be wonderful people came down half asleep and took good care of us whilst we recovered from our ordeal. It was the second time in my four months of travelling that I wanted to go home (the first was when I had my head in a toilet bowl during my 4th bout of food poisoning). The rest of the day neither of us even wanted to leave the hotel because we hated Vietnam so much.

Feeling slightly better the following day, we organised to hire motorbikes and drivers to take us around the areas surrounding Ninh Binh (the town itself is rather nothing). What a day! We had an absolutely fantastic time, in fact it was one of the best days we have had on this trip and a stark contrast to the previous few days. It really was what we needed to feel good about Vietnam again. The day started early with a trip to Tam Coc otherwise known as ‘Halong Bay on rice paddies’. As we were there so early, none of the touts had had time to set up and bus loads of day trippers from Hanoi had not arrived yet. As a result, we had the whole place to ourselves. It was amazing. We hired a boat and paddled down the river in amongst the rice paddies and huge limestone karsts. The weather, despite being overcast and rainy didn’t put a dampener on the day and if anything, made it somewhat eerie. We jumped back on the bikes and checked out a few temples in between riding through backstreets and rice paddies. En route, we also managed a climb up Mua Groti, providing us with fantastic views over the whole region. Despite seeing some amazing sights, the best things about the trip were that we only saw 3 other white people the whole day and that the drivers which our hotel had organised were genuinely nice people who didn’t try and rip us off or take us to shops and gave us lots of tea.

Unfortunately the following day, it was time to leave Ninh Binh and continue moving up northward to Hanoi. We really enjoyed ourselves and I think the place we stayed had a lot to do with it. For anyone heading that way, I thoroughly recommend Ngoc An Hotel. The people there were so friendly and willing to help. They even helped us get the local bus to Hanoi as opposed to booking us on a tourist bus for which they would have received a commission. Oh and a giant breakfast was included with the price of the room every morning which didn’t hurt.

That’s all for now,

Kate

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Comments

[anonymous]

If you hate Vietnam, you'd better get out immediately. Why staying there? You are just some offsprings of the criminal prisoners who robbed land of aborigines? Your tone of writing expresses your stupid, stingy behavior that definitely makes your life miserable. USD 5 are big to you, then at your home what do you normally eat? Sh*t, right? Stay at home, those poor, stingy, uneducated whites!

[Kaaate]

Dear 'anonymous', I'm going publish this because I believe everyone is entitled to their own opinion. If you don't like my blog don't read it, quite simple. I write this for my friends and family at home, not you. If you had bothered to read then you would have realised that money really isn't the issue here and I don't hate Vietnam, I am more than happy to pay foreigner prices, the issue is being lied to. Either way, perhaps next time you should seek some ground for your insults rather than attack someone whose background you have no knowledge of.

[Tom]

Wow, Anonymous, you are clearly someone who has been wronged by an Australian/white person, but you're also very arrogant and ignorent to assume anything about someone's life after reading a page of travel blog let alone use their nationality and race as an insult. I can guarantee that whatever country you come from also has its bad past and to use that against someone is just sad. So considering that you spend your time trawling throught blogs intended for family and friends with no point but to start arguments, it seems to me that "your tone of writing expresses your stupid, stingy behavior that definitely makes your life miserable. "

[ali ertan]

jealous a ot
i feel myself lucky i met this blog of urs..wide opened my view of travel ideas..as a lover of nature vietnam was nowhere for me but now can see that one of must seen places before death..i hope i can oneday ,if cant before death ,God has alot to answer me there if there is one.. ps:ananoymous is noone to respond ever..