After leaving Sapa, had a brief stopover in Hanoi to see Ho Chi Minh's embalmed corpse (I'm not convinced it isn't just a Madame Toussaud's mockup) and have one last bowl of Hanoi-style Pho before heading south to Ninh Binh, the gateway town to Tam Coc. Also known as "Halong Bay on the Rice Paddies," Tam Coc is a place where, for 60,000 dong, a local will paddle you along the Boi River through the forest of karst cliffs jutting up amid stretches of rice paddies where workers toil on the water's edge. The three hour trip also includes a few caves that the river has carved into the cliffs.
At the end of the trip, our boat captain, a middle aged mother of two, unfurled a huge sheet stuffed with embroidered cloth, T-shirts and postcards and urged us to buy. Over the course of the trip, we'd discovered that the young mother of two works two days each month rowing boats on the river, and spends the rest of her time in the rice fields. She lives on about 600,000 dong per month, or about $35. Plus, she had rowed us for three hours in the boiling heat and was friendly and chatty the whole time. I couldn't say no. So my mom is getting an embroidered illustration of two Vietnamese women walking in a field.
That night, I boarded a bus to Hoi An after a horrendous ordeal with the bus company mafia (see later post) that almost left me stranded in Nin Binh. I'd booked a room there for four nights, thinking it would be a good idea to get some relaxation in after a few weeks of constant traveling. The town was nice, but I could have done with only two days. It's a quaint little riverside place with great French colonial architecture and a nice white sand beach about two miles outside town, but it's far too touristy for me. The entire old quarter of the city has been taken over by tailor's shops (it's a big draw here to have a suit or dress custom made for dirt cheap) art boutiques, overpriced souvenir vendors and hotels. And the population on any given day is probably 50 percent European tourists, 50 percent locals. It's pretty, but not a city with much character. Although we did have a nice time chatting with fellow travelers there and whiling away the days on the beach.
From Hoi An, I caught a bus to Nin Binh, hoping to book a hotel room when I arrived the next morning. I didn't, however, count on Nin Binh being the Vietnamese version of Orlando, Fla. And, with most of the nation having a week off for the Tet holiday, literally every hotel, guesthouse and hostel in the city was completely booked. I spent two hours going door-to-door looking for a room before one hotel owner told me I could sleep in her bedroom for the night, while she took the couch.
Much like Hoi An, Nin Binh hasn't really tickled my fancy. It's got a nice beach and is a great place to relax with a great nightlife, but it's also filled with tourists. Still, it's been a good enough time. I met up with a couple of friends I'd met in Sapa and rented bikes for a day to tool around the city, then we went on a party boat to some surrounding islands the next day. Quite the experience--after some time snorkeling on one of the islands' coral reefs and eating lunch on the boat, the crew busted out a rickety drum set, an old electric guitar, a bass and a tambourine and announced that they were Vietnam's newest and greatest boy band. Then they launched into a musical tour of every nationality represented on the boat, forcing a representative from each country to come onstage and join their performance. Other highlights of the tour were the floating bar--basically a large bouey in the water where a crew member serves free cocktails to anyone willing to jump in and get them--watching the Vietnamese tourists perform Karaoke, and nearly losing two members of our tour after they attempted to sneak onto nicer boat while we were docked. When the boat began to pull away, they were forced to jump ship and swim back to our boat, making it back just in time for the boat to pull right back up next to us. The bars here are quite fun, and my nights have been spent sampling the local cocktails while mingling with other travelers we meet day to day.
Tomorrow, I'll head to Mui Ne; yet another beach town, but much smaller and with huge sand dunes outside town that are supposed to be pretty fun to sled down. If I can book a ticket before the bus fills up, I'll be in Saigon the next day, do a quick day trip in the Mekong delta, then on to Cambodia!
Floating bar!
Nico and the boy band sing for Ireland. Notice the elderly man wearing a coconut bra in the lower right corner.
Nha Trang beach.
Hoi An's riverside at dusk.
Hoi An's French colonial architecture.
View from the sleeper bus window along the Hai Van pass, one of the world's most storied coastal roads, where mountains jut up on one side of the highway, and the open sea borders the other.
Workers toiling in the rice paddies, Tam Coc.
"Halong Bay on the rice paddies"--Tom Cac, Vietnam.
The woman who rowed us through the karst formations in Tam Coc.
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