When traveling solo through Vietnam I a) didn’t know what the heck I was doing b) didn’t know where I should go visit and c) actually spent a lot of time alone. You hear that if you travel by yourself you’re rarely ever truly alone since it’s so easy to meet people along the way. This is often true…but sometimes the universe conspires to make you question if the whole independent trip was really such a good idea to begin with.
Like when you’re the ONLY traveler to get off a packed night bus in a small town at 10 p.m.
Which is what I found myself doing in Ninh Binh about an hour and a half outside of Hanoi. I then was one of two guests staying in the guest house I was ushered to. Seems legit. Because I had no clue what to do, or any one to do it with, I ended up hiring a motorbike guide for the morning to take me out to the surrounding area and Tam Coc, or ‘three caves’, in particular.
Here I go into a row boat – which the man paddled the oars with his FEET (and refused to let me take a picture) – to go out to the low caves. The entire trip to the caves and back wasn’t very far, only taking about 45 minutes, but led you through some serene waterways lined by rice fields and karst cliffs.
Beautiful, relaxing and peaceful.
That is, until you came to the caves and had floating convenient stores waiting for you. Clever and enterprising, but also annoying and uncomfortable when you’re in a boat by yourself in the middle of nowhere with pushy sales people. In fact, after giving in and buying a water, several women then pressured me to buy a snack for the foot-paddling boat man…which I’m pretty sure he probably just gave back to them to resell on his next round through.
