Next we went to the little town of Tam Coc, a smaller place in Ninh Binh province in northern Vietnam.
From there you can book boat trips on the local river, which also winds between impressive limestone rocks and mountains. Similar to Ha Long Bay, you enjoy the ride through the natural scenery – but this time surrounded by land. That's why the area is often called the "Ha Long Bay on land". You can stay right in nearby Ninh Binh, which is also the provincial capital, or, like us, right in the little town of Tam Coc. It's a bit quieter there and there are other possible excursions too. After our recent packed adventure schedule, we also planned 2 days of doing nothing here. So we stayed in the town for 3 nights and, on the day we arrived, used the hotel's bikes to ride leisurely to the Hang Mua viewpoint. There, for the first time in Vietnam, we were confronted with an overpriced entrance fee for climbing the many stairs. We weren't used to that from Vietnam so far – we'd experienced it more on Bali, where high entrance fees are charged for various tourist spots and the value for money doesn't quite add up.
But we didn't want to leave it at a bike ride along rice fields and the main road, so we climbed the 462 rather steep, irregular rock steps up to the dragon sculpture at the highest point. At the top you had a great view of rice terraces on one side and the river on the other – and of really a lot of tourists who shared the sunset view with us. But the view really was worth it, and we looked straight down into the narrow valley where we planned to take a boat trip in the coming days.
We used the next day for lazing around and going out for delicious food. On foot we explored the town centre, which offers a walk around the river mouth. This was also the starting point where you got a ticket for a boat trip. We had a really great concierge at our accommodation, who went with us to feed the beautiful koi kept in the hotel pond. They really were beautiful, colourful big fish, and we were allowed to feed them by hand. If you haven't done this yet, you should definitely try it. With their big mouths they suck the fish food out of your clenched fist, making really loud smacking noises. Until then we'd only known feeding fish by scattering food. So it was definitely an animal encounter worth mentioning, especially as I spent many minutes every day watching the colourful fish.
On the day before our departure the weather played along perfectly (at that time it was a bit rainy in northern Vietnam), and we went to the boat landing early in the morning to ride along the river. We were given life jackets and assigned an older Vietnamese lady, who was obviously our athletic rowing power. The tour takes about 1 hour and led from the starting point between water-lily fields, some already harvested, past the high limestone mountains. Some water-lily farmers were just cutting the flowers. By the way, Asian water lilies are huge and have long stems and big flowers and leaves.
We've been coming across these beautiful flowers since Bali, Indonesia, and I'm impressed by their size every time. We rode to a point where you were taken through a passage in the rock, then turned around and were rowed back to the starting point. You greeted the oncoming boats and their passengers, and the first floating vendors were already coming towards us. Since our research had told us that people here try rather pushily to sell all sorts of things from boats, we chose one of the earliest possible departure times. The plan worked and we were left pretty much in peace. There weren't many other boats on the river either. When you now think of our older rowing lady, who ferried us up and down the river without a break, you have to picture her doing most of the rowing with her feet! You should have seen it. She even had multitasking down: while rowing with her feet, she unpacked her snack with her hands. Truly impressive. Since, unfortunately, she didn't speak a word of English and didn't understand our gesturing, we could never get across to her that she should stop for a moment so we could get a great photo. But we still collected enough video footage before taking the night sleeper bus on to the area near Phong Nha Cave.
Enjoy browsing through the photos and video.