A Night in Ninh Bình

Hello and xin chào! Here's a quick and belated post about my super brief trip last month to Ninh Bình. Sometimes called Hạ Long Bay on land, the province of Ninh Bình is renowned for its stunning karst mountains, between which lie rivers and rice paddies.

View towards a Ninh Bình village.

It's a two-hour train ride from Hanoi (and less than $10 round-trip) to the train station of Ninh Bình city, and then it's only 20-30 minutes on a motorbike to the mountains. Though I stayed at what was called a homestay, it was effectively a hostel with an on-site restaurant.

A place to relax above a lily pond at my homestay.

Though the scenery was unreal, Ninh Bình seemed quite a bit more commercialized than Mai Châu (though that's a pretty low bar). I arrived on a Sunday morning and left the following morning, so the main attraction (boat rides through the mountains) was considerably more crowded than it would have been on a weekday.

Setting off on my 2.5 hour ride.

The area was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014, so getting my boat tour was a super smooth process. I shared my boat with two Vietnamese girls about my age, one of whom broke out into full-volume song every 5-10 minutes during the entire 2.5 hour tour. You were given a choice of three routes, and having just seen a big tour group choose route #1, I decided on #2. Each included visits to a variety of caves and temples.

Exiting a cave.

I had assumed that the cave visits would be paddling in, looking around, and paddling out the same way, but that was not the case. We would go in one way and come out another after paddling for several minutes through a winding cave with very little head room. (I actually had to duck at several points). Though I had neutral feelings about the caves themselves, it was really cool to come out the other side and open up to the unbelievable scenery. We went through three caves in each direction, also stopping off at two temples.

One of the temples we visited.

While the temples were beautiful, they felt somewhat fake, as they were built only recently—how recently I don't know, but I would guess within the last 10-20 years. Though they were clearly functional temples with typical shrines and offerings inside, they were built expressly for tourism. I've mentioned before that I generally think complaining about authenticity as a tourist is a little absurd, but the temples on the tour were a bit too Disneyfied for me. (Don't get me wrong, I've always really enjoyed the contrivances of Disney World, but it's a little unsettling at a UNESCO World Heritage Site in rural Vietnam). This was not helped by the fact that the route I impulsively chose included a stop at some remnants of a Kong: Skull Island filming set.

If you look closely, you can see at the bottom right two bridges leading to a downed plane that was part of the movie set.

This was one of the most hokey things I have ever seen while traveling. All that was there was a remarkably fake-looking plane in the water and the film's "indigenous village" (or so it was called in the official survey I took at the end of the tour). Really bizarre. At least the scenery was still amazing.

Boats waiting to pick up their passengers after stopping at the Kong set.

After 2.5 hours in the heat, I went back to my homestay and relaxed as the sun set. Before leaving the next morning, I also visited Hang Múa, an extraordinary viewpoint that was beyond taxing to reach.

View towards the second set of stairs.

It was more than 500 steps to reach the top, and it was not easy. I had climbed similar numbers of steps to get to the top of St. Peter's in Rome and the Duomo in Florence, but Hang Múa was something else. In addition to the ridiculous humidity, the steps were crumbling in places and varied in size—most of them much larger than those on a normal staircase. The view at the top, however, was just as incredible as I hoped.

Looking out over a river—you can see a few small boats.

I was also amazed to find a couple taking wedding photos at the top. How that woman made it up there in a tight wedding dress with a substantial train I will never know.

Check out more pictures here.

Till next time,
Gray