Ninh Binh

We got the 0900 train out of Hanoi south to Ninh Binh. We had been warned the trains can be noisy, but we figured that meant the train itself could be noisy. It turns out we were being warned about the people on the train. To be honest, it wasn’t too bad.

The train wasn’t fast, it took just over 2 ¼ hours to cover the 116 kilometres to Ninh Binh. The train was air conditioned and comfortable. Kiwi was hoping to be able to sit in an open door, or at least open windows, but there you go. Every now and then a railway employee would come through selling food and drink. We didn’t recognise anything much on his trolley, and we have been eating local food most of the time.

Google maps won’t show the railway line, but here is a map showing where Ninh Binh is relative to Hanoi. It is 116 kilometres by train.

Upon arriving in Ninh Binh our ride to our home stay was waiting. The home stay was outside the city, closer to the attractions, and very nice. We picked it because the price was right and it had a pool, where we spent most of the afternoon. It wasn’t very hot in Ninh Binh, but it was rather humid. The views were a bit hazy, but we hoped for better visibility the next day.

We noticed that there were a lot of man-made ponds in the area with large lily pads in them. Apparently the locals breed koi carp for sale.

It rained overnight, but no matter, it was a bit cooler in the morning. After breakfast we hired a scooter from the home stay and went exploring. We headed to the Mua Cave first, not to see the cave, but to see the view. When we arrived and were heading down the road to the entrance a local guy and his wife blocked the road, and insisted we didn’t pass. We had to park in their parking area. The guy even had a whistle to make himself appear official. We decided a fight wasn’t worth the effort, so turned around and parked about 60 metres back at a restaurant where the parking was free.

Having got past the obnoxious little man (and resisted the temptation to shove his whistle where the sun doesn’t shine, and advised some other foreigners to ignore him), we walked along a rather bizarre entry road to the bottom of the stairs to the viewpoint. There were fountains, statues of horses, lanterns, view points over the rice paddies, and food and drink vendors. It was all very colourful. The view was good, which we were glad of as we had to walk up well over 100 uneven, slippery, stone stairs to see it. The rice below us was a golden colour and ready to harvest. This area has been described as Ha Long Bay on land, due to sharing the karst limestone landscape, but here the fields added some colour.

After wandering up and down the stairs, we got back to ground level and wandered back to the scooter. After all that we completely forgot to visit the cave. Once back at our parking spot we bought a drink by way of saying thanks to the people who owned the restaurant we parked at, then it was time to go.

Now we were heading to Tam Coc, one of the two main places where one can be rowed along the river by a local. However we continued past the boats to the Bich Dong Pagoda. We parked, having paid the parking fee, then strolled in to the grounds, past the lotus flowers.

We then walked past a rather precarious-looking part of the limestone outcrop and up the stairs (yep, more stairs) carved into the limestone to a cave. We walked through the cave, spotting bats as we did so, then back out into daylight and up more stairs to the top pagoda. The view here wasn’t great as the vegetation had grown up to hide it, but no matter. We went back down and found another path up yet more stairs, then down some stairs to an area of level ground surrounded by limestone. Here was a small house, a small lake/large pond, a goat or two up on some rocks, and probably some snakes which we didn’t see. It was much more peaceful there, so we walked around a bit before heading back to the scooter.

Having retrieved the scooter from its park, we headed to the bird park, but once there decided against going in on the basis that it was the wrong time of day and there were likely to be tour groups in there making too much noise (like the school kids at the cave on the way up to the pagoda). So we headed back to our accommodation and relaxed by the pool.

It rained again overnight, but in the morning it cleared up. So we set out on the scooter to Trang An. Here we did do the boat ride on the river. We had hoped that by getting there early we would beat the crowds. We didn’t. It is Summer holidays in Vietnam so the kids are out of school for several weeks. Once again, we found ourselves in bedlam.

There were three boat ride routes to choose from, two of which go to the island where they filmed “Kong: Skull Island”, a movie we were barely aware existed. The other route avoided the island and we chose that one. It seemed that most people wanted to see the island, as where we were there were few boats, so it was rather relaxing and peaceful. The scenery was nice, and going through the nine caves was fun.

Some of the caves have been enlarged to allow the boats easier access, so are now tunnels more than caves, but they are still interesting to go through. Other caves had low enough ceilings and stalactites that we had to duck as we passed through. The caves are lit by overhead lights, and the local spiders have taken advantage of insects being attracted by the lights and spun their webs over the light shades. In one cave we saw that the spiders had caught themselves feasts of very large proportions; three very large dragonflies, with wingspans of about 150 – 200 mm. That is putting the dragon into dragonfly. We never saw a dragonfly that big anywhere else.

The boats are like aluminium skiffs, with bamboo over the floor. Each boat has four passengers (we shared ours with a Vietnamese couple) and a local rowing it. They row facing forward, which looks a little awkward but it works. Using Google Translate (the babel fish of our time) we asked our rower how many trips he does each day, the answer was four or five. We told him he must be very strong, to which he smiled and gave a thumbs up. The tour lasts almost 3 hours, but he got a few breaks while we were off the boat visiting the three temples we stopped at, one of which is 700 years old. Yet again we risked life and limb walking up and down slippery stone stairs.

From the river we headed back to our home stay for a few hours of r & r, before buying our onward train tickets. Here is how it works with train tickets. When we looked on the official Vietnam Railways website for the price of tickets for the train from Hanoi to Ninh Binh it was 115,000 VND each. We bought tickets through our hostel in Hanoi and paid 230,000 each. That is some mark-up, but it saved us going to the train station and gave us more time to see Hoa Lo prison. This time we didn’t want to pay too much, so looked at the website again. From Ninh Binh to Dong Hoi was 391,000 VND. Unfortunately the website only allows online sales with credit cards issued by Vietnamese banks. So we looked at a couple of other websites which sell train tickets, their mark-up was almost 100% again. That is ridiculous, we are happy to pay a bit extra but not that much extra.

So we got on the scooter and rode to the railway station in Ninh Binh to buy them ourselves. Riding to the city was easy, though we had to cross a 4 lane highway to get there. We noticed that trucks on the highway all sounded their air-horns as they approached the intersection to make sure no-one tried the usual “that looks like a gap” manoeuvre so beloved of Vietnamese drivers. Anyway, we got to the city and managed to negotiate the traffic safely. It has to be said the traffic in Ninh Binh is very light, we would never try this in Hanoi. The traffic lights here count down the phase, and the locals like to start moving when the red light is at one or two seconds to go.

The lady at the ticket counter spoke enough English that we were able to buy our tickets easily enough, then we rode back to the home stay. After dinner we watched “Kong: Skull Island” online. It was alright and a lot shorter than Peter Jackson’s bloated effort, but it didn’t make us want to go back to see the island with its movie sets and locals dressed as extras from the movie. If you have seen the movie, it combines shots of Ha Long Bay and the area around Ninh Binh, with some poetic licence thrown in.

At some point during the night (we didn’t check the time) we were awoken by a spectacular electrical storm. It was right above the area we were in. The thunder came immediately after the lightning, it was too close to even get photos of the lightning. The building was shaking and the lightning could penetrate the blinds on the windows and closed eye lids. Maybe Thor was in a bad mood, or showing off. Either way it was a great son et lumiere show.

On Friday we had a lazy day, we felt we deserved it. The furthest we went was to the restaurant where we had dinner the night before for a cake and milkshake. The milkshake was rather good and much better than expected.

We liked the area, the landscape is interesting and we were there in time to see the golden rice before it was all harvested.