We travel further north this segment from Hoi An, to Hue and then to the backpacker’s heaven town of Tam Coc. What was meant to be a simple Grab ride early in the morning from our hotel in Hue to the airport left us with some disturbing feelings as we passed by a tragic scooter accident.
2023.03.20 – Hoi An – Hoi An (Vietnam)
After breakfast, we purchased tickets to visit various sites in the old town of Hoi An. Even in the early morning, there were already tour groups showing up at the most popular sites. In the afternoon, I opted for another bicycle ride through a different route while Jenny was enjoying some relaxing time in our room. Sadly my bicycle route was not as scenic or enjoyable as yesterday’s. In the evening, we took a Grab to a restaurant and walked back to our hotel.
2023.03.21 – Hoi An – Hue (Vietnam)
After our last breakfast in Hoi An, we took a Grab to the departure point for our minivan journey to the town of Hue – some 110kms further north. We enjoyed a lot of beautiful scenery along the way especially as Jenny and I were seated just beside the driver. Upon arriving in Hue, we managed to walk to our hotel from one of the stops the driver made in town. After our dinner, we walked along the river front where we were persistently solicited by many dragon boat operators who insisted we hop-on for a night time cruise on the Perfume river. We firmly declined each time. On the way to our hotel, we stopped at a hip coffee shop for some refreshments. Back at our hotel room, we started to plan tomorrow’s itinerary in Hue. As we had done for each town we had visited to-date, we plotted all of Hue’s tourist attractions/sites on Google Maps to get a better idea of the tourist landscape.
2023.03.22 – Hue – Hue (Vietnam)
Our 4-star hotel breakfast buffet was one of the largest we had come across on this trip. As we exceptionally limited our stay to two nights in Hue, we opted to focus on a subset of its tourist attractions/sites available. After breakfast, we took a Grab to visit the Dieu De Pagoda. We walked back through the Dong Ba Market and then crossed the bridge to reach the dragon boat pier. We firmly negotiated the price of a private boat ride to the beautiful site of the Thien Mu Pagoda – some 6 kms upstream on the Perfume river. Although there were many tourists on-site, it was fairly easy to get some nice pictures. On the return ride, we requested a drop off on river shore closer to our hotel. Our weather application was reporting temperature of 32C today while it also indicated “feels like 40C”. Back at our hotel, we took a few hours rest before heading out again to visit Hue’s main tourist attraction: the Citadel and its Imperial Enclosure. Given the heat, we took a Grab instead of walking the 2kms to the Citadel site. We spent almost two hours walking through the Imperial Enclosure buildings and ground. To our distress, my phone battery was almost depleted by the end of our visit. I just had enough time to request a Grab to drive us to a supermarket. We finally got to enjoy our first supermarket in Vietnam. We bought snacks, toothpaste and hair conditioner which we had tried to buy at the local grocery store it would have cost us an arm and a leg. We had our dinner at a Pizza Hut in the shopping mall. We had to take a normal taxi to return to our hotel as my phone had died.
2023.03.23 – Hue – Tam Coc (Vietnam)
We had an early breakfast in order to catch our 10:20 flight to Hanoi. We, or at least I, had a somber moment when our Grab car on route to the airport came to a traffic slowdown where police were cordoning one lane. As we drove by, a scooter driver’s body laid on the ground covered with a sheet. A few meters further, I could see the driver’s crushed scooter caught in the front of a truck’s back wheels. The scene was very gruesome and it was difficult to forget. This accident was yet another reminder how scooter drivers put their lives on the line each time they tackle the roads. I was thankful Jenny did not notice the accident but wondered why our Grab driver had lowered his window along the way. Our 1h flight to Hanoi was uneventful. At the airport we took another Grab to reach the Hanoi train station. We had a 2.5 h wait for our scheduled train to Ninh Binh. We spent most of our waiting time in a coffee shop across the street from the train station. The 2h train ride to Ninh Binh provided some interesting scenery while giving us insights into local travel on a train. From the Ninh Binh train station, we took a Grab to the small town of Tam Coc – some 6 kms away. The town was kind of a backpacker’s heaven with each other business being a restaurant or a home-stay. We checked into our accommodation not really sure what to expect as we had only paid half the price of our other accommodations in Vietnam. We were pleasantly surprised by the accommodation. We had a nice dinner at a nearby restaurant specializing in roasted BBQ duck.
2023.03.24 – Tam Coc – Tam Coc (Vietnam)
Although our accommodation’s breakfast offering was significantly more modest than our previous day’s breakfast buffet, it did fill us up for our sightseeing activities. We were pleased to learn that we could use our accommodation’s free bicycles to visit Trang An – a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its spectacular landscape. Once on the road, we regretted almost immediately having hastily selected our bicycles for our journey as they were very clunky and proved very difficult to ride. Nonetheless, we persisted and rode the 8kms to the site of Trang An. We arrived on-site at 9:30am expecting to be among the first there but it was not the case. After securing our rickety bicycles in a paid parking, we purchased our tickets for a 3h boat ride that brought us through some amazing caves and allowed us to visit some interesting temples along the way. Unfortunately, we had to share our boat with another local couple who spent a lot more time praying at the temples than we did. The landscape was amazing although we had seen similar stuff in China. It was truly the boat ride through the caves that made the Trang An experience unique. On our return bicycle ride to town, we stopped mid-way to visit another popular tourist site: the Mua Cave. As we made our way onto the site, we stumbled on Mirca, a young Philipino lady from Vancouver who had recently completed a Master degree in Australia. She had opted to solo travel to South East Asia before returning to Canada and pursuing her career. We bid farewell to Mirca as she had just finished her visit. Although the 500 steep steps up the mountain proved to be a good workout, we were rewarded by the stunning views of rice fields and the Trang An floating boats on the river below. We were relieved to return our rickety bicycles at our accommodation. Jenny still had energy to do a thorough clothes wash before we took a well deserved shower after our long day of sightseeing activities. In the evening, we tried a different restaurant for our dinner but were a bit disappointed. We found it very interesting how Tam Coc managed to accommodate those folks that wished to party during their stay in town. In the evening, the party buses would roll out in a parking lot centrally located. The party revelers would then simply need to board one of several buses offering a bar, a dance floor and some loud music on their rooftop.
2023.03.25 – Tam Coc – Tam Coc (Vietnam)
We woke up to some drizzling rain in the morning. Although we kept on expecting the weather to clear up, it was not the case. We were not overly disappointed to stay in our room and relax. We used our time to catch up with our blog text and photo selections. Later in the afternoon, we walked out of our hotel and visited several stores displaying signs for “money exchange”. After checking a few business offering poor exchange rate, we finally found one with a good rate. On our walk back, we enjoyed some nice lattes at a nearby coffee shop. In the evening, we returned to the same restaurant we had tried on our first evening in Tam Coc.
2023.03.26 – Tam Coc – Hanoi (Vietnam)
Happy birthday Victoria! We heard some thunder and heavy rain during the early morning. The weather was very grayish as we had our last breakfast in Tam Coc. After paying for our room, we took a car ride from our hotel to the Ninh Binh train station for our 9:30 train to Hanoi. The train appeared more comfortable to us than the one we took in the reverse direction 3 days ago. After our arrival in Hanoi, we took a Grab to our hotel. We were once again reunited with traffic chaos as Ho Chi Minh city. As our hotel room was not ready, we dropped by the Vietnamese coffee chain: Highland for some refreshments. We bought some snacks, beer and wine for our 3d/2n Halong Bay cruise which will start tomorrow. The temperature was much cooler in Hanoi. We concluded that it must get much colder as we even noticed our room was equipped with a portable heater. We sincerely hope we won’t need it during our stay. In the evening, we had dinner at a nearby restaurant offering local Hanoi dishes.
