Vietnam Day 12: Hikes, Hostels & Trains

The Whatsapp number I received from Josh and Jess the day before paid off. As promised, I texted the number and requested a day rental on a scooter and in 20 min, two men arrived at the hotel indenting to leave me a bike in exchange for the equivalent of $5 CAD, my passport number and a signature. When I asked if we could have two bikes, he simply smiled and doubled the price and handed the keys over to the other bike. Best service.

We are cool as hell

We acquired these bikes for a couple reasons - the first is that we hadn't actually driven any scooters yet. We spent our motorcycle trip on dirt bikes and wanted to taste for ourselves the casual joy of zipping through traffic on an automatic bike. The other reason was that we wanted to go for an iconic hike up the Lying Dragon Mountain and wanted to get ourselves there via scooter.

The third reason was that we needed to kill some time today before we started our journey Southward: we were catching an overnight train, but not until 10:30PM. So that meant we needed to fill the day with fun activities (and probably beer) so we could sleep soundly.

8 litres was 100,000, or about $5 CAD

Hand pumping our gas after a random dude asked us if we needed gas, ushered us in here and then disappeared down the road

So that's what we did. It was a beautiful day (which is a real double edged sword for a couple of very light skinned northern boys) so we hopped on our rides and Cass navigated us (after a little mis-navigation) to the beginning of the Lying Dragon Mountain.

Parking and admission paid, we navigated through an Eco-lodge that operates at the bottom of the mountain.

It is really beautiful. There is a really nice manicured walkway with small bungalows, ponds, and restaurants all leading up to the beginning steps of the mountain. When walking up, we noticed the intersecting raised walkways that ventured out into some fields, but decided to explore those after we tackled our main task.

It begins

I think describing climbing 500+ steps is boring, so just imagine that it is hot, fairly muggy, and you are climbing up 500 steps - BUT everytime you take a break and look behind you, there is an ever expanding vision of the beauty of the Ninh Binh area. Mountains, rice and lotus fields, mountain goats just crushing it, and other sweaty hikers. And if you look up, there is glimpses of a Dragon lying across the top of the mountain. At one point you can choose to go left or right and we went right and climbed up to what I later learned is called the Mua Caves Tower. Here we met up with some Americans - Brendan and Heidi. Brendan gave away he was from the South because he called me "brother" and ended his sentence with y'all. Such pleasant people. They were travelling for the last few months, and considering relocation out of the United States for a while. So of course we talked about what every North American talks about, perched up on the Mua Caves tower overlooking Ninh Binh - the cost of living.

But seriously, we ended up hiking with them for the rest of the mountain and just chatted eachother up. I might have mentioned this before, but not alot of Vietnamese people we met spoke very much English (nor should they need to obviously), so in a lot of ways beyond the two of us, it has been pretty isolating in terms of conversation. So, it was nice to just easily chat with with new people who seemed just like genuinely nice folk for a while.

An aside: I mention people we met and talked to, but don't really share pics of them because I didn't take a lot of them and didn't ask them if I could post them to a social platform, even if it is this mostly personal blog. I think that anonymity while travelling should be maintained by default if not asked for permission ahead of time. So, that's why most folk do not feature in the pics - you'll just have to imagine them instead:)

So we hiked and got all/some of the iconic pics. As you do (it was well worth the aching knees and calf):

We hiked back down and talked some more with our new brief friends over a tea, and then as two brothers are wont to do we walked through the lotus fields on the boardwalks. It could have been more romantic with the flowers in bloom, but what can you do?

By the time we returned to Tam Coc it was time to check out, and luckily the hotel would hold our bags for us until we needed to depart later that evening.

We scootered around a bit more, but with nowhere to go really, we ended up at a nearby restaurant for some appies, where a German fellow who "didn't work there but was a friend of the family" made awkward small talk with us. We watched him try to get others to come sit down, to no avail. I had learned a couple nights prior from Lawrence that when we saw English, Italian, French, German speaking people working at these places they were actually volunteering for room and (sometimes) board. Fair enough.

Done with that scene, we kinda of just ended up back at our hotel so we could park our bikes. It was late afternoon and we wanted a beer. Once we did that, it was no more driving, but we had no where else to go really. So, I parked us at The Banana Tree across the Way and we soon learned that this was the local hostel-complex (a dorm style residence, bar, pool, and restaurant) and hangout. A younger Australian dude, Henry, started chatting with Cass when we were ordering our first beer and invited himself to sit with us. the next 4 hours was just math - the accumulation of more hostel residents, empty beer bottles and stories. I won't list them all, but we met a British woman who was a barista in Squamish, a French dude who kinda looked like a model with a dad-stache (now popular with the youth), another English woman who told us nothing about herself expect that she was 33 and liked Soju, and a British guy (also 33) who enjoyed hiking, had done the pacific crest recently - he was planning to settle down in BC in April if possible after his travels and I got a chance to wax poetic about the Bowron Lakes Chain.

Cassidy, to his credit, shines a lot more socially once the beers start flowing. I am good as an opener, but do tend to get bored (or too intense) - he is good keeping those vibes up and casual as the night goes on. It's been a pretty good combo so far this trip.

He's the best!

So it was I, responsible (allegedly) older brother, who ushered us out of there half way through the Karaoke Bingo so that we could catch our train. We both were having a lot of fun and wanted to stay, but tickets were bought, and we needed to leave the North of Vietnam.

Cutting that beer with some chips. Aside: while I was figuring out some train stuff, Cass taught English to two Vietnamese children for 15 min.

The train came, and we boarded. After a terrifying moment where I thought our sleeper room had been double booked, we had our space confirmed and Cassidy and I laid out in relative comfort as the train rumbled into the night.

Cozy!