Ninh Binh - Day 3
We leave for Hue later tonight on the 11pm overnight train, so we're in no hurry this morning. We start with brekky on the deck again and try to put a plan together. Ninh Binh isn't a huge place so we've checked off most of the attractions already. We mooch around the hotel room until about midday, pack our bags and farewell our mate.
We've got plenty of time so we decide to take off on foot. Also because Court's butt doesn't think it can sit another minute on those rock hard bike seats. We meander a bit down the road before stopping at the riverside cafe for coffee, dumplings and bahn mi.
We hit the road again and we're headed for Phim Trường Kong Skull Island, the place where some of the King Kong movie Skull Island is filmed. It looks pretty cool from what we can see but is unfortunately closed due to what appears to be renovations. Not to worry. We carry on down the street to our next option which is another boat ride, but apparently even nicer than the one we did on our first day. We rock up and see the boat rides go for 2-3 hours. Neither of us are keen for a boat ride that long. We decide to head into Ninh Binh city and see if we can get an earlier train. We can get one around 5:30pm, but it won't be a sleeper carriage. It's a 10 hour train ride to Hue, so we decide to stick with our later train and hopefully get some sleep on the journey.
With a few more hours still to kill, we wander over to a shop, buy a beer to justify our use of the free WiFi and make some bookings for our stay in Hue and catch up on some blogging. The man, like many locals we've encountered so far, has a gnarly cough. We put it down to living in a constant state of smoke and smog. Courts already has just picked up a cold so in the event he has something contagious, we decide to move along.
We've still got a bit of time so we wander down the freeway looking for somewhere else to park up. We encounter a stack of unidentifiable bones on the side of the road and comment (again) on just how charmless the actual city of Ninh Bihn is. It's all business and no fun. We stop for another very strong coffee and pick a place for dinner. Mexican it is. We need a wee break from bahn mi and rice noodles. The restaurant is large by Vietnamese standards. There's no one there when we arrive, but we are early. We order burritos and quesadillas and it's surprisingly not bad.
With still more time to kill we walk some back-streets to a big supermarket for some supplies (mainly snacks and water for the train trip). We get a better feel for what city life might look like when we get a few streets away from the main drag. We've been told many times now that Vietnam is very safe, so we aren't feeling too stressed about wandering around a bit at night, even in a city that's not so touristy.
We slowly walk back to the train station and grab a seat. We've still got a couple of hours before our but we've got our books. Turns out we dont need them. Almost as soon as we sit down a local kid of about 8 or 9 sits next to us and starts asking questions and giving us all sorts of facts about Vietnam, Australia and well known people from the Philippines. He tells us he comes to the station regularly to talk to tourists to improve his English and learn things about other countries. He's with his little sister and it looks like his dad is supervising a few seats away. Incredible stuff. He says goodbye to us and wanders over to some new arrivals to chat.
Not 5 minutes later a young girl comes over and does the same thing. She's 10 and her English and just general intelligence has us blown away. Her mum is also sitting behind keeping an eye on her and her sister who is doing the same thing, but might be 6 years old at most. Our new friend seems to be well across world events and wants to learn more about Australia. She asks Courts what she does for work and then how much she gets paid monthly. We do the conversion and her jaw drops. But then we explain how things are more expensive in Australia and she gets it. She even understands about inflation and how it has been bad in some countries, but not too bad in Vietnam. Jeff was wondering about that earlier today and checked ChatGPT.
We've obviously made fast friends because it doesn't take long before she is sassing Jeff about his hairy legs and soup noodle bowl eyes that make him look 40. You can't make this stuff up!
Who would have thought sitting at a train station would be such a highlight. We learned a lot about Vietnam by asking a lot of questions, and it was great to hear the perspective of the country through the eyes of a (precocious) 10 year old.
All the kids and parents eventually leave and our train finally arrives, only about a half hour later. It's started raining lightly and we're feeling quite cold for the first time this trip. We hop on and make our way to our room. The other two passengers are already in bed on the bottom bunks (four to a room) so we climb up to the top bunks as quickly and quietly as possible. We've got a pillow and a blanket, which is more like a thick sheet. We don't know what to expect for the next 10 hours but we're hoping for at least a little bit of sleep.
