Time to hit the road again!! Next stop Ninh Binh.

Ninh Binh was something that we decided to do upon a recommendation from a local tourist Office. Trang An Grottoes (the national park just outside the town of Ninh Binh) was described to us as the inland version of Halong Bay. We loved Halong so much we just had to see it for ourselves.

Ninh Binh is about 2 ½ hour train ride outside Hanoi. We arrived in Ninh Binh just in time for dinner, so we hit the streets in search of some good street food tucker. What we struck upon instead was happy hour at the local Bia Hoi joint.

Bia Hoi translates as ‘Fresh Beer’ which is the restaurants or street vendor’s own home brew. Every place had their own version and every version is different and very tasty (and cheap – 20 cents a glass). However…. you have no idea how potent one version from another is until you wake up the next morning with a shattering headache and sketchy memories of the night before. But so worth the .20 cents!!

This Bia Hoi joint was actually a collection of about 20+ street vendors lined up on the banks of the local river each selling their own version of Bia Hoi. The setting was picturesque and rowdy and a great opportunity to get down with the locals for some after work beers.

We sat ourselves down on the tiny stools and tiny table and soon became the novelty for all the local beer drinkers. Before we could say Khong Cam On (no thank you), Duncan had been challenged by two separate groups to skull his beer. This happened about four of five times, he even gave one guy a 3 second head start. This turned into quite a drinking game for Aussies and Vietnamese egos. Obviously impressed by the white man’s ability to drink were invited to sit with a group and share in their jug. The first chance that we had to meet and (somewhat) chat with the locals. A wonderful experience J

Next morning and feeling a little dusty, we accessed Trang An Grottoes by riding bikes along a picturesque road for 10km. It is near the more popular Tam Coc but not so filled with foreign tourists and more popular with local Vietnamese, Duncan and I couldn’t resist. We jumped in a little wooden rowing boat with a local rower and were taken along the river for 2 hours through 9 caves all which provided access to amazing private grottoes which can only be accessed by boat and through the sometimes very low limestone caves. We had a chance, unlike Halong Bay, to see up close personal the amazing Karsts the Vietnamese landscape is so famous for. Everything was so quiet and peaceful in the grottoes…that is until lunch time when the hoards of Vietnamese tourist came from Hanoi. We turned a bend and were faced with hundreds of little wooden boats paddling towards us – peaceful instantly became a distant memory, thankfully it was towards the end of our journey. Some groups used it as an opportunity to have picnics on the little boat complete with healthy quantities of alcohol. 2 hours of steady drinking in the sun led to rowdy behaviour and some of the boats were near to tipping on several occasions. Duncan and I were relieved that we took Lonely Planet’s advice to take an early boat!!

That night we jumped on the overnight train to Hue. Unfortunately none of the tourist ‘soft sleeper’ were available like the very comfortable Sapa train. Instead, we were faced with 12 hours of the ‘hard sleeper’. Ok, so when I say “we were faced with”, Duncan I think was secretly looking forward to the whole experience. Me, on the other hand, who values her sleep, was under no illusions that it was going to be a long night.

The trip started off with us discovering that there were already people asleep in our beds. The conductor basically told us that we shouldn’t disturb them. As you can imagine that didn’t go down well. He then took us to a soft sleeper carriage where there was a wonderful cabin with four empty (wonderfully soft) sleeper beds. “Hang on a minute….!” Duncan and I were explicitly told by the Hanoi ticket office that there were no soft sleepers left (not only for this journey but for the next 4 nights)!!! Lesson #48 of Vietnam: there are rules for locals, and then there are totally separate rules for tourists. Nevertheless, this was working out I thought, the conductor has nicely offered us this soft sleeper because someone has taken our beds – awesome! Not so…. He closed the door on the little carriage and the high powered negotiations began. He asked us to pay the full price of our tickets, plus an extra 20% more than the normal soft sleeper price for the use of the beds. “So…” Duncan began “what you are saying is that we pay for two strangers to sleep in the beds that we have already paid for as well as paying 20% more for the use of these beds..???” The conductor didn’t have much English but he got the message from Duncan pretty quickly. In the end the two strangers were removed from our hard sleeper and we got our original ‘beds’. A hard sleeper, is exactly that, a ‘hard sleeper’, I read reports on the web that it wasn’t too bad and it didn’t feel like a wooden plank…blah, blah, blah.. yes it did!! I had to fold over the doona, which looked like it had never been washed, to get some padding and I used my own travel pillow – my face was going nowhere near the pillow they provided. Duncan on the other hand proclaimed the next morning that he “surprisingly had very good night’s sleep”.

We arrived in Hue (pronounced Whey) 2 hours after we were due to arrive – yay for Vietnamese time (I still can’t understand how a train can travel so slowly)! Thankfully Hue was a wonderful surprise to Duncan and I. The city used to be the capital and its citadel was the most recent residence of the royal family of Vietnam. However for us it was the perfect town, at just the perfect time. The inner city’s vibe was laid back and relaxed with lots of little cafes and restaurants where you could sit and relax with fresh and cold Bia Hoi. This coincided with Anzac Day and cruising past one of the little pubs they had on the main street Duncan caught a glimpse of the big AFL Essendon v. Collingwood ANZAC day clash on the big screen. We both shared a very Aussie moment (sigh) in a Vietnamese pub on ANZAC day watching AFL live while drinking Fosters beer….Alright, so we very quickly re-discovered why no Aussie will ever drink Fosters, however the scot in Duncan couldn’t resist the buy 3 get one free special– jeez, it’s vile stuff!!!

While relaxing that evening in one of the restaurants we met up with an English guy and started chatting, soon more tourists joined us and our number swelled to about 10 from all over the globe. Several Bia Hoi later and we were in the mood to P.A.R.T.Y. We hit one of the “honky” bars in the town, full of travellers like us and playing cheesy “honky” music. It was exactly what Duncan and I needed, a little taste of home. We let our hair down with our new found friends and had a ball drinking Vietnamese rice wine into the wee hours.

Hue was unexpected and was perfectly timed to recharge our batteries…. next stop Hoi An…