After another somewhat long journey, we checked into our hotel, Tam Coc Gardens, in Ninh Binh. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves, staying somewhere so fancy since we’re used to AirBnBs where we mostly just take care of ourselves. When we arrived, they gave us a warm towel to wipe our hands and a welcome cup of tea. Staff grabbed all our luggage and took it to our room, the Vietnamese woman at the front desk explained various things about the hotel to us before escorting us to the room and showing us around.
It was already 9:00 at night, and we were exhausted, so we ordered some food from the restaurant to be brought to us as room service, and I climbed into my fancy ass bath.
And then I put on my fancy ass robe, and ate my fancy ass springrolls and chili lemongrass tofu, with the fancy ass carrot flower decorations. And generally just felt fancy.
The following morning, I enjoyed the misty view from our patio before Anthony woke up.
We then walked through the lovely gardens on the way to the restaurant for our breakfast.
We had yet more pretty views while eating our breakfast.
Afterward, we met up with our guide, Toan, and his extra driver, at which point we strapped on some helmets and hopped on our motorbikes!
We had possibly the most spectacular scenery of the trip driving through Ninh Binh on our way to Cuc Phuong National Park, but I didn’t feel safe enough to take both hands off in order to take pictures until we were on better, straighter roads, which of course had less incredible views.
My driver would pat my leg and point out various things like water buffalo and goats and rice fields.
After a wonderful ride, we arrived at the park, Vietnam’s first national park and its largest nature reserve, and we met up with a new guide to show us through the nature reserve.
The nature reserve is home to well over 100 primates, including langurs, loris, and gibbons. We even got to see some baby monkeys!
They also have a 2-step process for re-introducing the primates back into the wild which made me happy. Wildlife rescue and conservation is my dream job.
After the monkeys, we got to see the turtle reserve, slightly less impressive but still cool.
We made our way back to our drivers, and off we went, riding through the cool jungle, millions of butterflies swarming us on the way.
We stopped again, this time for a long, steep climb up to a really cool “Cave of Prehistoric Man.” The cave was excavated in 1966 where it revealed human graves and various tools.
We had flashlights with us so we explored through the cave which was actually quite massive. At one point we climbed up some extremely dangerous feeling ladders. They were very, very steep, they were rounded instead of flat, and they were wet. Once we safely got to the top, we saw dozens of bats before carefully climbing back down.
We climbed back down to where we were parked, and back on the road we went.
We stopped at a restaurant, where first we had to use the restroom which was quite the experience. They didn’t have actual toilets. They had what looked like a urinal in the ground. And Anthony said the men’s one was filled with hornets and mosquitoes which sounded like even more fun.
Anyway, our guide asked us if we were vegetarian or not, we said yes, and a few minutes later, food and more food and more food and more food just kept being brought out to us. When we first got to Vietnam, I figured the reason nearly all the Vietnamese were so thin was because most of their signature dishes were simply broth based (such as pho). However, the last few days I have been fed more food than I ever have in the US. Maybe they assume since we’re Americans we eat that much, or maybe it’s the norm. I’m not sure. But it was a lot of food, and we could only eat about half of it.
It was good fuel for what we had next, though. Since Anthony and I apparently like to torture ourselves on vacation, we followed our guide on 2 to 3 hour afternoon trek through the damn jungle. It was hot. It was humid. It was dirty. There were bugs freaking EVERYWHERE, and I had not been able to find bug spray beforehand. Considering that, I didn’t get nearly as many mosquito bites as I had been expecting, probably just between 15 and 20 (I can easily get that many in my backyard summer evenings).
We did see some pretty cool trees. A giant thousand year old tree that has been damaged by recent storms, and then another giant tree that I couldn’t even get a picture that captured the whole thing.
But other than that, it was really just trekking through the jungle. And there were SO MANY STAIRS. I was not sure I was going to make it. I was recovering from my cold, so my breathing was still shallow and I was weak, and oh my gosh, the never ending stairs. Any time we stopped, my legs would be shaking.
But made it, I did. Pouring sweat and wanting nothing more than to go back to my hotel pool.
But then we hopped back on our motorbikes, and the cool breeze revived me.
We basically circled all of Ninh Binh. We took a long route back home, seeing some absolutely stunning countryside. In some of the more rural areas, the locals would get very excited at the sight of my blonde hair.
We saw many workers out farming. We saw rice paddies. We saw karst mountains. We saw lakes. We also saw a king cobra! Which we failed to grab our camera in time to photograph.
By the time we got back to the hotel, it was very late afternoon, and I was worn out, but had had a fabulous day.
We rinsed off all the dirt on us and then went over to our wonderful pool.
Nice and refreshed, all we had left for the day was dinner and drinks and relaxation.