Day 218: Hanoi to Ninh Binh — Temple of King Le Dai Hanh — Tam Coc Garden Resort — Epic Humidity
After three nights in Hanoi we were up and out early to catch the train to the countryside of Ninh Binh, a two-hour local train ride away.
We were picked up by Khan in our van at 8:15 and drove 5 minutes to the train station.
As we got out there was a little confusion: I walked around to the back of the van to help with the luggage, but Khan explained that we didn’t need to get the bags. Margaret and I assumed, as the van drove away with our luggage, that this meant the driver was off to take our bags to a luggage car or something. Fancy!
I’ll come back to this.
The train was packed with locals and a few backpackers. Our guide Khan rode with us.
For the first 20 minutes there wasn’t one wisp of air moving through our packed car — and the temp was rising. It was at least 100 degrees. I thought elderly people were going to start passing out.
Finally a train attendant walked through and said something (sorry that the AC is on the fritz?), so someone used a food cart (hot corn on the cob!) to prop open the door — which made it a little more tolerable. By then we had all sweat through our clothes, including James.
Upon arrival we walked across the station parking lot towards a silver van, identical to the one we’d just left back in Hanoi…. and hey wait, that looks just like the same driver… WTF, that *is* the same driver!
Yup. We climbed (back) into our same ice cold, refreshing, air-conditioned van, where all of our luggage was still sitting in the back. The driver had driven there from Hanoi.
We were SO. CONFUSED. Clearly there was something lost in translation this morning and on our itinerary.
Khan explained that our local tour operator had put us on the train “for the experience.”
In other words, we’d just paid to have a faux “roughing it” experience. The transportation equivalent of paying to clean panda poop out of the cage (except in that case, we knew what we’d signed up for).
We had a good, long we’re-speechless-but-dying-laughing spell over the ridiculousness of this one. Cannot make it up.
And the funniest/most baffling part was that our guide was like, “Wait — you guys thought you were actually just….TAKING THAT TRAIN?? Bahahahhahahahaha!” As if that would be The Most Absurd Concept Ever.
When we finally composed ourselves and dried out, we were pulling up to a local lunch-only, family-run spot run called the Mountain Goat restaurant, where we were served spring rolls, grilled goat meat rolled in rice paper with mint, a chicken dish with onions and pineapple and a sautéed green of some sort that Willa was all about.
The grownups had beer as we continued to chuckle about the train thing.
Goat is the most popular local food in this area. We also learned from Khan after lunch that even the Vietnamese items at these restaurants in tourist-heavy Ninh Binh are sorta westernized… for instance, Vietnamese would always eat chicken on the bone (ours was more like deboned strips of chicken).
After lunch we made a stop by the Temple of King Le Dai Hanh. It’s a check-the-box stop for all tourists in Ninh Binh.
Willa and James voiced their displeasure at having to go to a *temple* (essentially a non-starter, instant-meltdown, triggering word for them at this point).
Khan — a father of 4 young kids totally gets it and promised them we would be in and out in 30 min.
The heat on the train this morning was only a preface to what this day has become. It might be the most stifling humidity I’ve ever felt in my life. Yesterday the heat index was 112 and today feels even more intense. People always exaggerate with the phrase “it feels like a sauna.” Well, today it actually feels like a steam room. You sweat profusely after the first 3 minutes you step outside air conditioning. More on the heat below.
Luckily the sun was behind the clouds for most of the temple tour. We did a quick swing through the beautiful grounds and Khan did a nice job abbreviating the story of Ninh Binh’s years as a capital city.
We actually asked him if we were breaking records for the fastest tours of some of the major sites and he agreed that we were.
He also continues to be amazed that we’re not doing full days of touring all day every day… “It’s just a little bit of touring! Just half time! Lot of time just for relax!”
Umm, yes, exactly. Can’t imagine full days of touring in this weather with a 5 and 7 year old. Not possible.
We continue to be ogled by Asian tourists from outside big cities. At the temple, a large, good-natured group from northern Vietnam stopped us for several pictures and kid cheek-pinching.
Back in the van, we were off to our hotel. It’s called the Tam Coc Garden Resort in Tam Coc, a little village in Ninh Binh.
It’s a gorgeous little boutique with amazing gardens and views. It reminds us of a smaller version of the Sol y Luna in Peru, which we loved.
We have one room with a nice view out over a rice paddy surrounded by striking green-covered limestone mountains that shoot up out of otherwise flat terrain. The area is called the “Ha Long Bay on Land.”
We couldn’t think of anything except the swimming pool. We’d sweat through our clothes and just wanted to check in and relax.
But Khan wanted to accompany us to do check in (Margaret’s biggest pet peeve — we don’t need help checking in — this is the 62nd place we’ve stayed this year) and help us reserve the hotel bikes for a ride that we realized was on the itinerary for tomorrow.
Then, in the most stunning display of tour operator hand-holding we’ve seen all year, he actually walked with the hotel staff to our room and *came inside our room* after they left to continue asking us if everything was okay and confirming for the 5th time that we would meet at 9am tomorrow for a bike ride… when we don’t even need a guide to ride 30 minutes around the hotel grounds…
We finally got our suits on and hit the pool, which is really beautiful. It also breaks the record for this year’s warmest (previous record-holder: heated pool on the roof of the Belmond Miraflores in Lima).
This heat was au naturel — the water’s just being boiled in the sun all day. It was right up Margaret’s alley… she’s typically freezing in any normal pool. And of course the kids loved it.
After an extended swim (+ a G and T), we went upstairs for an early dinner, then were back in the room for kid bedtime before 8pm. Everyone was asleep under the mosquito nets by 10.
About the heat:
We are not complaining about the heat. We are in awe of it, and yes, sometimes it defeats us, but we’re not complaining. We knew what we signed up for. When we decided on our world itinerary, and decided we wanted to follow the sun all year — the only way to work it was to be in Southeast Asia squarely during its most stifling period. We are ok with it.
