Tuesday 8th November 2022
Our hotel includes breakfast, so we thought we may as well take advantage of this rather than buying an early lunch, as we’ll be getting the train around lunchtime.
We had to preorder last night and had a choice of chicken noodle soup or beef noodle soup. Pete chose beef and I went for chicken. We both ended up with beef, apparently the chicken wasn’t actually available. I didn’t really mind though, especially as it was a very good noodle soup. I think it may be have been a Pho? Whatever it was, it was one of the better of the soups we’ve had on Vietnam. The noodles were slightly chewy and delicious.
We’ve only got a few hours until we need to catch the train to Ninh Binh, so decide to go for a walk along the beach. When I say beach, it’s definitely not a tourist beach. Or very sandy for that matter, it was more of a firm mud, with quite a lot of strewn rubbish. Having said that, there were also a lot of pretty looking shells and we saw some small crabs scuttling along so it was quite interesting to walk along. There were also a lot of fishing boats coming into shore with their morning catch, so that was cool to watch.
After the beach, we continued our walk. A couple of women with baskets were scattering what looked like tiny shrimp onto huge nets spread out along the side of the road.
All the nearby streets also had these nets at the side of the road, and seemed to be at various stages of the process. At some of them, women with sticks or brooms seemed to be turning the shrimps. It was fascinating to see.
It was soon time to head back to our hotel and get a taxi to Cho Sy station for our 4 hour journey to Ninh Binh. I didn’t take any photos of the train this time, it’s exactly the same as the one we took last night from Dong Hoi. Comfortable seats, lots of leg room, and regular food trolleys making their way through the carriages. This time there was also a fresh fruit trolley which I’d not seen before.
We arrived in Ninh Binh just in time to catch a beautiful sunset as we were driving in our Grab Car from the station to our hotel.
We were actually staying in the neighbouring village of Tam Coc, at Tamcoc Vuthanh Friendly Family hotel. We checked in, dropped off our bags, then went out to explore Tam Coc and get some dinner.
We ate at Minh Khoi Restaurant and ordered fried spring rolls, Trung xao hanh (translated on the menu as fried rice with pork, but think it was a mistranslation as turned out to be a very thin omelette with chives, rolled up then cut into slices), and a pork Bahn Mi. The spring rolls and omelette thing were tasty enough though not exceptional, but the Bahn Mi was one of the better ones we’ve had. We then ordered a chicken one and that was even better – would definitely recommend it if you ever find yourself in Tam Coc.
Emma and Pete’s Asian Adventure 