Did It Anyway

Ninh Binh, Tam Coc, or Trang An?

Ninh Binh is both a city and an area, and confusingly used to refer to the slow river boat ride attractions. The area is beautiful with karst formations and rivers, the city not so much. The attractive areas are near 2 towns about 15 minutes from Ninh Binh city: Trang An, and Tam Coc. We chose to spend 10 days between Tam Coc and Trang An, hoping to find some quiet countryside. Here’s what we really found:

Trang An is the real deal: a working village, surrounded by rice fields, with a tourist attraction built outside the town. There are many homestay-style hotels in the village, and a few on the farther outskirts in the fields. Locals are still doing the same thing they’ve done for a while, not hustling the tourist scene.

Tam Coc, on the other hand, is literally built to be a tourist attraction. 25 years ago, the river was dammed, a dock built, and the borders of the new lake formed by sloping concrete blocks. A marble road was built to encircle the lake, and homestays and hotels now dot the lakeside and surroundings. Every day, tour busses careen through town and drop off loads of tourists at the dock. These then board sampans and are rowed by hand or foot to the end of the navigable lake/river and back. It’s a pretty trip, as far as I can tell, but we didn’t go because the allure wore off. Tam Coc’s main road is lined with restaurants and travel agencies to serve the tourists who venture from the lakeside. It sometimes gets very, very busy and crowded with confused tourists, both Vietnamese and foreign. That said, Tam Coc is small, and fairly easy to escape for quieter places. It takes about 20 minutes to walk from one side of the village to the other. The best parts of Tam Coc are really on the outskirts of town. We really enjoyed our walks and bike rides out of the village, especially out to Bich Dong Temple. In spite of the development there are some lovely places nearby, but you probably won’t be alone anywhere.

For someone seeking quiet, Tam Coc delivers a challenge: a Karaoke Bus. This was a double-decker bus, with the top floor converted to an open-air karaoke lounge. At around 4pm every day, loud music would begin pumping from it, but only rarely interrupted by actual karaoke singing. There is no escape from the music, even in a bungalow across the lake, its doors closed. The karaoke bus is currently situated on the shore of the lake, so everyone gets to hear the music until it stops, sometime late in the evening, maybe 11pm or so. According to Google maps and online videos, there are other karaoke busses as well, but we didn’t see them. It doesn’t make sense for a town whose visitors are actively seeking to get into a natural setting, and trying to wake up early to beat the tourist crowds. Perhaps the fact that we only heard customers there once in a week means that the business prospects are poor.

Near Tam Coc: Bich Dong Pagoda

As Vietnam constantly reminds, it is a land of contrasts. Near noise, there is peace.

Get on a bicycle in Tam Coc and ride (or take a shuttle you can buy with a boat ticket) for maybe 20 minutes along a quiet-ish road, and you will find the gently bustling entrance to Bich Dong Pagoda.

I won’t pretend to understand or explain its history, but the setting is gripping. Up tight against, and inside the karst here are a series of temples. The view from each is compelling, and the temples themselves are in heavy use by locals. Stairs lead up the karst past temples, and into a cave, with more stairs, and temples, until the trail reaches the last temple overlooking the valley. It’s a feast for senses: echoes, smoke and incense, polished steps, verdant, misty views, humid breezes. It’s relatively modest and imperfect, compared to other temples I’ve seen here, but the place strikes as genuinely representing the place.

Trang An FTW

For me, Trang An was far more enjoyable because we could ride a bicycle for just a couple of minutes and be on a dirt road out in the fields. It’s much slower-paced, and people still smile. There are tourists there, the ones who are staying a few days, and just a few tour vans passing through town, but at maybe one twentieth the scale of Tam Coc. If I were to visit Trang An again, I would choose a place farther from the village, just to have fewer neighbours and a clearer view of the karsts. Most of the homestays are tight to the neighbours, so it’s pretty intimate. This turned out to be entertainment itself, being up close to people as they do their thing.

Trang An The Tourist Attraction

Outside of town is the amazing Trang An Complex: a lush and verdant place where rivers pass between and through the karsts. It’s gorge-ous, and rightly famous.

I actually enjoyed being a tourist here. It too is a major tourist attraction, but more thoughtfully designed to reduce congestion, chaos, and confusion. Tourists arrive on one side of the main road, pass through a tunnel underneath, and are actually guided along to the waiting boats. The place clearly has massive capacity, but on our weekend visit, we were on a boat within about 15 minutes of arrival, without angst.

There are 3 tours offered, and we chose #2, which was a mix of temple visits and caves. Our boat captain, who encouraged us to row along with him, gave us about 10 minutes or less at each of the 3 temples. That was frankly not enough time, but there were a lot of people to get through. Somehow, we lucked out and only ran into a crowd as it was leaving one of the temples. Lindsay was especially taken with the place, and might have gone a second time if we had stayed longer.

Near Trang An: Van Long Nature Reserve

In search of a more natural scene, we rented a scooter and rode to Van Long from Trang An. It’s a half-hour ride, and it was…eventful. In a good way. We encountered a kite festival, passed a bunch of kids pushing a paper mache bull along a road, witnessed a very skilled scooter crash recovery that narrowly avoided a tree.

Van Long is the total opposite to Tam Coc and Trang An. We arrived about 3:30pm, and didn’t know we had. Instead of rows of tour buses and shouting touts were were greeted with this:

Actually, there were a few people around, and eventually a gentleman in an official hat waved us toward a ticket booth back a short ways down the road. Tickets in hand, we boarded our boat and again were rowed around beautiful terrain. The experience was so mellow and different from Trang An or Tam Coc, I can wholly recommend it.

Ninh Binh Weather

If you’ve read this far, you may have noticed a lot of grey weather. That’s because it rained a lot during our visit, giving us about 2 days of sun out of 10. Having witnessed Tam Coc when the rain was heavy, and the temperatures hovering at 16 celsius, it’s hard to recommend coming here when it’s so cold and wet. The place is setup for good weather, so cool weather and rain means endless puddles, genuinely damp clothing, and almost nowhere to be warm, except under a blanket. We saw so many tourists go ahead with their Tam Coc boat rides, huddled under plastic parkas and umbrellas, and there were zero smiles on faces on their return. We survived with the sweaters, long underwear, and wind breakers we packed for our Nepal trip.

Restocking

“Bother burgling and everything to do with it! I wish I was at home in my nice hole by the fire, with the kettle just beginning to sing!” – Bilbo Baggins. Roast Mutton.

Every trip has some off days. Ours happened in Ninh Binh, where the wet weather and illness kept us huddling in bed for a week, instead of enjoying sunny afternoons on the verandah. It was rough, and I’ll admit that for a few days I was teetering on the edge of going home right away.

We did take stock of ourselves, and decided to trim Nepal from our trip, just to simplify things and promote more relaxation. Also, really, Nepal deserves more preparation than we can muster just now. So our next mission is planning out some very chill time in Bali, Lombok, or both.