Flooding and Ninh Binh

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HUE

We woke up early that morning to catch the 7am bus to Hué. After waiting for over an hour for the bus to pick us up we started to worry that it wouldn’t arrive. Our worries grew when the bus did indeed arrive. Having just been in an accident (the reason for the tardiness), the bus had windows taped over to keep the broken glass from falling out and huge dents and scrapes along one side of it. awesome.

Making our short stays even shorter, we were in Hué for a total of 5 hours where we wheeled and dealed to get a motorbike rental for half price (4$) for 4 hours. Hue is a World Heritage City, like Hoi An, but it failed to captivate us as Hoi An did. We were glad with our decision to stay only a few hours, although we missed seeing the DMZ, which is a day trip from Hué. We decided since we had seen the DMZ in Korea, an active border, that seeing the old DMZ in Vietnam would somehow be less interesting.

We hit the outskirts of the city first to visit a couple pagodas and tombs. Tu Hieu Pagoda was first and it was great! No entrance fee, although we paid a woman 5000vdn to watch our bike. As she was trying to get more money out of us, a dog came up and ate her lunch she had sitting out. She proceeded to yell at the dog and all in all it was a quite funny event! The temple was a deserted ceemetery and covered in moss. And I mean covered! Even the ground was layered with moss, making every step we took a careful calculation to avoid ending up on our derrieres. The green moss and the old cemetery gave this pagoda a great rustic feel and was very picturesque.

Next we visited Minh Mang Tombs (55,00vdn entry) which had large grounds, was nicely restored, but when we finally got to the end of the property we were disappointed to see that you weren’t actually able to see the tomb.

To get back to the city, we had to cross this thin bridge that had been made specifically for bikes and was divided into 2 skinny lanes to traffic in each direction. This was probably the most scared I have ever been on a motorbike as the traffic was going slowly over the bridge and there was less than 2 inches on either side of the bike for error or wobbling. Thanks to the stellar driving skills of a certain Michael Smith we made it safely over the bridge and were finally able to breathe again!

We stopped by the famous Thien Mu pagoda, an impressive tall pagoda with a nice temple behind it. Back inside Hue city, we visited the old Citadel, a former imperial city located in the centre of today’s city. It was heavily bombed during the Vietnam War and is currently in a state of reconstruction. It was actually quite a disappointment for us and we spent very little time exploring it. The Royal Theatre was cool and the remains of a few ruined temples were nice as well.

Leaving the Citadel, we were met with rush hour traffic which was simply insane on motorbikes!! Eventually we made it back to our bus depot where it started raining just as we were boarding our long overnight bus to Ninh Binh.

NINH BINH

Without knowing it, the bus we boarded that night would be one we would not soon forget. The rain that had begun continued to intensify and did not stop for days. What did stop that night was our bus and all traffic on the road to Ninh Binh. The rain and flooding had gotten so bad that cars could not see where the road and bridges were and caused a massive traffic jam as a result. Mike got the short end of the stick again and got a leak next to his bed. We finally arrived in Ninh Binh 4 hours later than expected and pulled our packs off the bus to an unwelcome surprise – they had been dragged through the flooding all night and we completely soaked all the way through!!! Every piece of clothing in the pack was stinky and wet and a bunch of paper-based items were ruined and had to be thrown out. Luckily all of our important things were with us on the bus and nothing of value was ruined.

We found out later that our woes were the least of problems as there was a major bridge collapse during the night, a bridge that we had crossed just hours earlier! We also heard from our friends Ben and Lindsay who were on a bus behind us that night and got trapped on the wrong side of the collapsed bridge. They were stuck on their bus for 48 hours as it tried to navigate it’s way through the flooded roads and collapsed bridges! Other buses were canceled for the next 2 days as the country tried to deal with the flooding. In the end, we counted ourselves lucky to have gotten over the bridge before the collapse!

We made our way to our hotel where we checked out a few rooms and the wet shoes on a marble staircase created a bad situation which resulted in me falling down the stairs. I bruised my arm and tail bone pretty badly but shrugged it off in favour of a nap, banana pancakes and making plans for exciting Ninh Binh.

It seemed that Ning Binh would be difficult to navigate so we paid 8$ each to get personal moto drivers for the day! We each rode on the back of a bike and our drivers took us around to the main sights surrounding Ninh Binh. There is not much to the town of Ninh Binh – we walked from one end to the other in about 20 minutes! The real awesomeness is in the landscape surrounding the town.

We started at Mua Cave, which is really just a teeny cave, but has a nice climb up the mountain which offers stellar views of the surroundings. Ninh Binh is surrounded by limestone mountains and rivers that run through and around them. It is described as the inland version of Halong Bay but its great because you travel it on a small row boat so you get much closer and get to row through caves through the mountains. It’s like an up-close and personal view of Halong Bay and despite the rainy weather, it was AWESOME and a definitely highlight of Vietnam.

At the top of Mua Mountain we had the most amazing views of the rivers running around the mountains. The weather was misty and the haziness around the mountains gave it a mysterious feel and it was gorgeous! Back on solid ground, we drive through some small local villages until we reach Tam Coc, where we boarded a small row boat and got rowed 2hr up river, around and through the mountains in a calm, beautiful atmosphere. Going through the caves was really cool because it was pitch black at some points and the local woman propelling our boat seemed to just know exactly where to steer the boat! They also are able to row the boat using their feet which is impressive and fun to watch!

At the turning point, our rower stops the boat, takes out some handicrafts that she has made and wants to sell to us. She makes it clear that she is not going to continue rowing until we buy something. The problem is that she was selling us embroidered doilies and tablecloths – not something we were really in the market for! We ended up buying a small embroidered image for 25,000vdn (about 1.25$).

As we are on our way back, she gives us each a paddle, expecting us to help her row. She repeatedly tells us “deeper, deeper” and we try as hard as we can to row deeper and deeper with our little paddles! Eventually we are rowing so deep our paddles are scraping on the bottom of the river, but she is still not happy! “Deeper! Deeper!” she says. As we approach the finish, we are more and more confused until she stops paddling, and makes a motion with her hand that clarifies exactly what she wants – a tip! She was saying “teep-uh” (aka TIP) but it sounded more like “deeper” hahahah! After us rowing so hard for 2 hours, no tip-uh for you!

After a chicken pho lunch we head to Bich Dong pagoda which has temples set inside caves which was super cool. We got scammed into paying a guy for showing us how to use incence properly, even after he made it seem like we wouldn’t have to pay. At Hoa Lu, the ancient capital, we visited 2 temples, climbed a mountain for a great view over the temple got short changed (almost) when trying to pay to use the toilet. Lesson of the day: watch your money carefully and don’t give in to peer pressure or you will get scammed!

That evening we walk around town, which is virtually devoid of tourists and had the most amazing duck pho for the hefty price of 1$ each! yum! We walked to the train station in an attempt to buy tickets to Hanoi, but there was no one to be found at the deserted station so we decided to take a minibus into Hanoi the following evening.

October 18 we rented a motorbike for a whopping 6$ (the most we have paid to date) and drove to Trang An Grottos, a similar concept to Tam Coc that we visited yesterday. Trang An is marketed as eco-tourism, is more expensive but has many more and longer caves and is very new so there are hardly any tourists. The entire time we were in our row boat, we saw only 2 other tourists – it was very relaxing and breathtaking.

The caves along the river were the real gem of this attraction as some were over 1km long! The problem was that this “eco-tourism” initiative was dotted with “caves” that had been blown out to make them large enough to fit a boat- not so eco if you ask me! We give our rower a 10,000vdn tip if she promises not to try and sell us anything, which she is not happy with but takes it and says no more. Trang An was hands down better than Tam Coc, however, it was a couple dollars more expensive. It was a bit repetitive to do both attractions but we love being outside and seeing these amazing mountains and rivers so we were happy we did both.

Back at the hotel, we have a quick lunch then the hotel arranges a pick-up to take us to the bus station where we will get on a minibus to Hanoi very soon, they promise. Turns out the hotel sold us a ticket to a specific bus and we had to sit by and watch 4 buses to Hanoi come and go before we are allowed to get on a bus! Lesson of the day: DO NOT give your luggage to a porter – once he had ours in the bus, he wouldn’t take it out so we couldn’t get on another bus!

The 1.5 hour drive to Hanoi was on this bus with the most annoying horn honk EVER and a driver who honked every 15 seconds. We were more than annoyed when we finally arrived in Hanoi and were confronted with a multitude of cabs and moto drivers wanting to over charge us for a ride into the city. We walked a few blocks away and got a normal taxi to take us to the train station where we just managed to nab tickets for the night bus to Lao Cai which is the jumping off point for Sapa in Northern Vietnam.

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