Ninh Binh

Ninh Binh is a small town south of Hanoi, and is not a usual place on most people’s Vietnamese itineraries. However, we’d met two separate people who’d told us it was their favourite place in Vietnam so we decided to check it out.

The town itself isn’t very inspiring; on our first excursion we encountered two junkies injecting each other down by the river and were shouted at and followed by an overenthusiastic tout. I had expected a village feel to the town but it is pretty grim and dirty and the people are obviously very poor. We had a hard time finding places to eat and alternated between local eateries and our guest house. Unfortunately, something somewhere made both of us sick and we were laid low for a couple of days. After that first day which we spent exploring the town, it rained heavily the entire duration of our stay making any excursion outside into a mudbath from which we would emerge filthy, soaked and caked with mud (there are no paths and no concrete, just mud).

The main draw to Ninh Binh is the national park nearby; Tam Coc. Known as ‘Halong Bay on rice paddies’ Tam Coc is named after the low caves through which the Ngo Dong River flows. The best way to experience this is to buy a ticket and get rowed along the river, through the caves and back by a local man or woman who does the honours with his / her feet! As the weather wasn’t getting any better in a hurry, we decided to just go for it on Sunday and got a taxi (mud free) out to the park and up to the river. Because of the weather, it was very quiet and free of tourists. We bought our tickets and were shepherded onto a boat with a very amiable Vietnamese man at the helm. We journeyed down the river through the caves, past the rice paddies and mountains and thoroughly enjoyed the ride. We met a lot of traffic in the form of Vietnamese youngsters, all of whom waved at us or said hi to us and many of whom took photos or videos of us on their phones. We are now famous. Our driver was very keen to take lots of photos of us and have photos taken of him and we all got along very well until the halfway point. Here we bought some horrendously overpriced beers and snacks for him and ourselves from one of the ladies in the snack boats (it is basically extortion and the driver and the lady split the profit 50:50) and then we began to make our way back to the starting point. Soon after we were pulled over to the side which our driver revealed the contents of the steel chest in our boat; embroidered doilies, tablecloths etc. It took a while to convince him we weren’t going to buy anything but eventually we set off again and were delivered back to shore, all the while pestered by pleas for a big tip.

That evening we had a sports fest in the form of the grand prix and the Hibs vs Celtic game. I needed a lot of beer to get through it which was helped along by our friendly guesthouse owner who insisted we try the Ninh Binh ‘water’ a number of times. That stuff is strong! The same guy helped us out with the night bus the following evening to Hue and allowed us to shelter from the weather while we waited out the day on the internet and watching tv.