Ninh BinhAfter our Ha Long Bay cruise docked, we took a cramped, 4-hour local minibus to Ninh Binh, a scenic region 2 hours south of Hanoi that is best described as Ha Long on land. We had a casual dinner, and went to bed early. Our homestay, the Tam Coc Mountain View, served a delicious breakfast with a great view. We enjoyed our eggs, baguettes, ginger tea, and mango juice overlooking rice paddies and massive limestone karsts. The homestay lent us bikes, and we rode about 18 miles during the day. At our first stop, Trang An, we joined a Korean couple for a 2-hour rowboat tour of a turquoise blue river with dramatic karsts and low-ceilinged caves. We had pho and rice for lunch, avoiding some of the menu items we hoped were simply mistranslations. We continued on to Hoa Lu, an ancient city celebrating its 1,050th anniversary, and walked through a few Buddhist temples built for the Vietnamese king. We biked for an hour back to the homestay, where the family invited us for a Vietnamese hot pot dinner. We took off our shoes and sat on a bamboo mat, using Google Translate to make some conversation with our hosts. In the pot of boiling broth, we cooked beef, bok choi, mushrooms, greens, and onion, accompanied by sides of rice, spring rolls, and garlicky, spicy fish sauce. Alexa and I enjoyed talking with Lien, the family’s eldest daughter, who had her wedding just 4 days before we arrived. She explained how Vietnamese weddings are elaborate, 3-day affairs with multiple photoshoots, changes of attire, and hundreds of guests. As with many of the younger people we’ve met in Vietnam, Lien spoke great English and had a wonderful sense of humor. The men passed around shots of happy water (rice wine), and we sat for a while after the meal sipping strong Vietnamese green tea and having bananas. The family could not have been more hospitable, and we are grateful that they invited us for such a special experience. The next day, we started with an egg coffee. During the Vietnam War, milk was in short supply, so the Vietnamese created an inventive solution: whipping egg yolks with sugar and condensed milk to add a thick, rich layer of foam to dark coffee. It is particularly tasty with some cocoa or cinnamon sprinkled on top. While Alexa took a break from sightseeing, I biked some more to take in the scenery. After saying our goodbyes at the homestay, we took an 8-hour train to Dong Hoi, then transferred to Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, home to the world’s largest caves. The caves were only discovered in the 1990s and confirmed as the world’s largest in 2009. We enjoyed dinner with another beautiful view from our new guesthouse. Our full-day tour of Paradise Cave and Phong Nha Cave was spectacular. We walked through a platform in Paradise Cave, and took a rowboat through an underground river in Phong Nha Cave. Many of the caves in the park were only discovered in the 1990s, and Son Doong was confirmed as the world’s largest in 2009. The structures we saw were otherworldly: stalactites (from the ceiling), stalagmites (from the floor), and pillars (stalactites and stalagmites that joined) were unlike any natural formation we’d ever seen, full of shapes resembling melted wax, columns of jellyfish, and giant mushrooms. The forms are created by dripping water that deposits some limestone from the rock, causing growths on the ceiling, ground, or side of the cave. The guide told us that they grow at a rate of 0.1 millimeters year, and that the caves have been evolving for some 400 million years. Walking and riding a boat through these caves felt like being transported to another world, an environment so different than that outside.
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September 2018
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