Brenna Abroad

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.

Anthony and I caught the 6am train from Hanoi to Haiphong, which was actually my first train experience. It was comfortable, though not as “steady” feeling as I had expected. Once we arrived at the train station, we had 20 minutes to find a taxi, get taxi’d over to the harbor, buy hydrofoil tickets, and get on the hydrofoil. Fortunately, there were dozens of taxis clamoring for our business. The first one we chose, however, showed us over to his little scooter. We’ve been in Vietnam long enough to realize that the Vietnamese can fit as much as they damn well want on a scooter, but we weren’t so sure the two of us and our luggage wanted to go through that experience. So we found a car taxi instead and were on our way, getting onto the hydrofoil on time, and without getting scammed as I had been forewarned. Hurray!

We pulled up to Cat Ba Island, which is beautiful, though like most of Vietnam, it’s at this weird stage of rapid growth. Plenty of poverty around, but also a lot of hotels and restaurants and bars being built.

Our tour guide met us at the hydrofoil, and after some prep at the office and a drive down to the water, we were loaded up on our Junk. We had chosen to do a private tour along the bays (Lan Ha, Ha Long, and Bai Tu Long bays) with Cat Ba Ventures. I had read mixed reviews on Ha Long Bay due to it being overrun by tourists and filled with boats and litter, so I chose to do the tour out of Cat Ba Island rather than Halong City. I was super pleased with that decision.

It was a bit cloudy and foggy for the first part of the tour, but it was still obviously gorgeous. The karst mountains had a smoky look through the fog, and the water was just so calm and peaceful. There was an occasional other boat, but it never once felt overrun, and I also noticed hardly any litter.

We stopped at a floating fish farm which just completely boggles my mind. These fish farms were everywhere in Lan Ha Bay. The farmers build these little floating shacks right on the water, and they grow and catch fish there. Sometimes boats bring them food and such from the markets, or every now and then they’ll go back to the island for their shopping. But mostly, their days are just spent there. I can’t imagine being that immobile. And all of them had dogs living there too, and somehow the dogs looked happy enough.

After that brief visit, we were back on the Junk, enjoying our beautiful views and chatting with our tour guide.

We were served a delicious feast for lunch, just SO MUCH food.  We’re not ones to waste food, so we somehow ate it all.

Eventually, we stopped to do some kayaking. The kayaking was amazing. We went through a long cave that came out to this beautiful, peaceful lagoon.

We then went through another cave to another lagoon. And then another.

Our guide was a kayaking machine, and so after all that, we kayaked some more to an empty beach to swim. It was a bit too chilly to swim, though, so then we kayaked all the way back to the junk.

We watched a beautiful, if somewhat foggy, sunset over the water while hanging out with our guide.

We then went down for yet another massive feast, this one even bigger to where we couldn’t finish it all. We drank a bottle of wine with it and then went off to bed, where we slept through the whole night for the first time since arriving in Vietnam. And by slept all the way through the night, I mean we slept til around 5:30.

I was feeling pretty miserable because of my cold, so I napped up on top a bit more until we were called down for breakfast and coffee.

Afterward, I tried to wake myself up by taking in some morning views.

I still felt lousy, but it was time for some kayaking, so I sucked it up and put my swimsuit on. Fortunately, the kayaking was so much fun, I completely forgot about how terrible I felt.

We first went through Bat Cave, which had a message above it telling us not to enter. It’s very dark in the cave, so it’s easy to get lost and hurt. It also goes under water at high tide. But lucky for us, we had a knowledgeable guide.

We did end up seeing a dozen bats while in bat cave, and then out we came out the other end of the cave to a calm lake. We sat there in silence, listening to the birds and cicadas. All of a sudden, we heard a new sound, and our guide sort of gasped “monkey!”. So we rowed over to the sound, but were never able to actually see the monkey, just hear him.

We gave up and went back through the cave and continued kayaking on, going through a few more caves to a few more lagoons.

We had everywhere all to ourselves, and it was magical. On our way back out, we saw the hordes of tourists with other companies heading our way, so getting out on the water early was the way to go. We stopped in one final lagoon, and once we got in there, Anthony pointed a ways away, and I looked over, and monkeys! A bunch of them, with babies! They were down on some rocks at the water, but by the time we got close enough for pictures, they had climbed up into the trees. But we sat there for awhile, watching them jump between trees, and eat.

We came back to the junk for long enough to cruise over to a little beach. We grabbed some snorkel gear, hopped into the water, and swam over to it. On the way, Anthony apparently ran into a jellyfish. Said jellyfish retaliated by stinging the crap out of his leg. Anthony thought “meh” and kept swimming over. We snorkeled and swam for around half an hour before swimming back to the boat. Upon arrival, we pointed out the bright red jellyfish stings on Anthony’s leg, and the boat crew quickly jumped into action to apply some natural remedy to it, giving him the “tough tourist” award because anyone else they had had get stung came back to the boat immediately. Anthony was pretty proud after that.

After another massive lunch, we just relaxed on top of the junk all the way back to Cat Ba Island.

Such a fabulous two days. 10/10 would recommend.

Last night, we joined the party outside our door, walking through beer corner until we could find 2 available stools to sit and have a beer and people watch.

Could not understand a word spoken around us, but it was clear everyone was having a good time. We were still fighting off the jet lag, though, so we left the party early while it was still going strong and went to bed. Sadly, we still didn’t catch up on sleep, as we woke up at 5am to water pouring down through a vent in our bathroom.

That meant we got an early start on the day, though, so we headed out to find somewhere to drink some iced Vietnamese coffee. During our walk, we passed a pretty park, and we saw locals doing their morning Tai Chi or lining up for their morning pho.

I wore my new dress which I bought from a girl who told me I was “so beautiful” which is a surefire way to win over my business (and it was like $6).

Once we felt more alive, we walked down to the French Quarter to visit the Vietnamese Women’s museum.

Right outside the museum was a photo exhibit by Rehahn Photography, showing older women of Vietnamese ethnic minorities, and the photos were absolutely stunning. I was in love with all of them.

The museum itself had 4 floors with different focuses, the first being marriage, pregnancy, and childbirth. We looked through images, read about the various marriage rituals of the different ethnic minorities, examined tools involved in childbirth, saw examples of the gifts and exchange involved in marriages, and watched a couple videos.

The next floor was more about Vietnamese women’s role in family life, mostly centered around the roles they had in keeping a home and tending to the agriculture.

We continued up to learn about various historical women, mostly about the women involved in the Vietnam/American War. It was fascinating reading the stories from a northern Vietnamese perspective. The verbiage was clearly different than what we would see in a museum in America, and it was weird to see the propaganda from the other side, but it was mostly just fascinating reading about all these women that were so involved in the war.

The final floor was centered around fashion. Probably the most interesting was seeing images of the various teeth lacquering strategies, women smiline with black or red or green teeth, but the dress exhibits were lovely. Much of the traditional dress is quite beautiful.

Afterward, we caught an Uber which was a rather harrowing experience. Trying to walk through the streets of Hanoi’s Old Quarter feels like a dangerous feat, but sitting in a car that’s maneuvering through scooters and pedestrians while the driver is watching a movie on his phone is a different level. But we made it safely to the Temple of Literature.

The Temple of Literature is a Confucian temple and was Vietnam’s first national university.

The architecture, layout, and statues were really quite pretty and different than anything I’ve seen before.

There were also TONS of people there. Mostly families or friends or couples like us wandering through taking pictures and selfies. Some worshipers. But also classes in their graduation gowns and wedding parties. Cameras and cell phone cameras EVERYWHERE.

We started walking back through the grounds to leave when a few girls ran up to me, holding their cell phones up and saying “picture.” I thought they wanted me to take their picture, but nope, they wanted to take a selfie with me. Who knows.

We headed to a Banh Mi stand that had some vegetarian banh mi sandwiches available for lunch. Somehow it was the only local Vietnamese restaurant around that had primarily Westerners at it. I told Anthony they were probably all vegetarians like me that Googled what restaurants they could eat at.

After food and some rest back at the house, we ventured back out into the world. We walked back to Hoan Kiem Lake, which seems to be our favorite spot in Hanoi, to sit outside at a fancy restaurant and drink a milkshake. Because I’m 7. But also because I’ve come down with a cold and ice cream sounded good for my sore throat.

Because of said cold, we found a pharmacy after getting a little lost in some alleys, and since I couldn’t read what any of the medicine was, I asked the lady working there if there was any cold medicine. I sure hope she understood me because she handed me some medicine which I then bought.

It wasn’t quite supper time yet, but we were hungry and saw a vegan restaurant, so we decided it was close enough. It certainly wasn’t Vietnamese food (though it did have a slight Vietnamese flare to it) but it was delicious and we got to sit on a patio upstairs and watch the crazy Hanoi life below us.

On our way back, we stopped in some art galleries. The art is absolutely gorgeous. Giant, colorful images of Vietnamese life. We ended up purchasing a small painting for $10. We probably could have bartered, but at that price, what’s the point? Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of it before it got all wrapped up.

Once we got back to Beer Corner, we decided to grab a stool and watch as the local bars and restaurants prepared for another crazy night there.

We need to wake up super early tomorrow to catch a 6am train, so we came back to the house early to get everything ready and get to bed.