Vietnam Day 11: Boats and Buggies

Since Day 10 ended a bit later than anticipated, we slept in. It should be noted that due to jet lag, sleeping in on this trip has been to about 830 or 9 o'clock. But undeterred from doing the tourist things one should do here, we walked out to the main area of the town where there is a dock and gate and admission booth. Today, we would be paddled (by foot no less) down the Ngo Dong River.

Tam Coc quads of steel routine

For just $17, we would go on an excursion that hit 6 sites over three hours - 3 caves by boat, hang ca, hang hai, and hang ba (which I think literally translates to fish cave, two cave and three cave!) and 3 sites via an electric buggy - the bich-dong pagoda, the water cave and the fairy cave.

Pure joy

Cass and I being rowed through flooded rice fields was magical. The fields are hemmed in by these jutting cliffs full of jungle and vegetation and birds.

Net was the name of row boat captain and she was cheerful and tried to help with our questions as much as possible given the language divide. She had a certain script for the ride obviously that was learned ahead of time - like the length of each cave we rowed through, but when we asked other questions we had to try and understand one another the best we could.

Net was a good sport

A few thins I learned from Net: The water and the mountains both have snakes, but not to worry about the water snakes, but if you get bitten by the mountain snakes then you go to sleep and don't wake up. The clusters of pink we saw on the cave walls and bamboo were snail eggs. According to her, snails were bad because they ate the rice, but good because snails are good to eat! We were currently traveling in the in-between season for rice farming, so soon the water levels would drop and the fields would be revealed.

Entering the first cave

By June, they would be blooming and all the much on either side of us would be a seas of yellow rice flowers (which makes more sense given the art of this place often had this same boat ride as going between two yellow fields). When the water rose in the wet season, it got high enough that they couldn't row through the last cave, which made sense as the ceiling of that cave was much closer to us than the others.

By the time she was set to let us off at the place where we would catch our buggy, she had also sold us each a piece of art. As per usual, I tried to learn a few Vietnamese words, but won't attempt to reproduce them here. It was a very fun experience.

Stop # 1

We next waited in line for an electric buggy to take us to a series of caves and pagodas. I don't have a lot of info on them because honestly we were not there long enough to even read all that much, just basically walk through them, marvel (and they were marvelous) and then hop back on the buggy. During this section, we met a couple - Josh and Jess from England who were maybe around 30. They were on the tail end of a 2 month trip to celebrate Jess becoming a therapist (like me!) in England. They were really kind and we chatted with them about traveling in Vietnam, and also Thailand (this was a common combo destination for many of the travelers we encountered). We visited each site together, and they even gave us the contact info for a scooter rental company which would drop the scooter off at our hotel. Like all brief encounters such as this, when it came time to go our separate ways Cass added them to instagram (because I don't have it) and we said our goodbyes.

Having felt like we accomplished what we wanted to on the tourist front, we just chilled the rest of the day. We got laundry done (a service here which only costed me 2.50 for most of my clothes) and enjoyed the air conditioned hotel room.

The bear knows laundry

Cass had said he got a really good massage at a nearby place the previous night, so I treated myself tonight to a 60 min massage. The only reason this is of note is because I took the owner's advice and got the "Vietnamese" massage. Honestly, she brutalized me. I do hope the pain is going to yield some long term gain, because boy was it an experience. I think I will opt for the more spa-like massage in the coming weeks.

The most relaxing part of the massage....though they did serve me mangos and tea at the end, too

As per usual, we ended the day with some beers, people watching and some grub.

Grub

Tomorrow will we continue South to Hue.