We’ve been away now for almost 2 months and it finally rained during our journey south. Warm rain Paul!!

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We travelled from Cat Ba to Ninh Binh where we planned to stay a day or so. The journey was pretty uneventful although the local bus did follow the “Never Full” principle! Fortunately, we were almost first on the bus so we did have a proper seat for the 3 hour journey rather than a tiny plastic stool in the aisle. Ninh Binh itself is used by some as a base for trips, others travel from Hanoi, but the town itself is pretty dull. Its saving grace is that just a few kilometres out of town you find yourself surrounded by fabulous karsts and rice paddies. We had read about a number of scams at the Tam Coc boat rides so opted for the newer and lesser used, Trang An Grottoes instead.

Our hotel is very grand and at $15 was something of a steal considering it had a huge, tastefully decorated room, with enormous bathroom, balcony and flat screen TV. The bonus was that it was very close to the railway station which was to be our next mode of onward transport.

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Getting to the grottoes was a little more challenging. Trips were available from hotels and agencies but as the number of tourists is low, there were no cheap group tours, just private hire car at $25. Having checked out the map we decided we could walk it let alone get a taxi for less than $25. It was about 8kms (5 miles) and we managed to get a local taxi that cost us $6 return trip! The grottoes were fantastic, and the ticket price of 100,000VND (about £3.30) included a 2.5 hour boat ride along the river in, out and through the caves in the massive limestone karsts. We went through about 9 or 10 grottoes, some up to 100m long, and some of them so low we had to lie flat on our backs in the boat. Our boat lady sometimes rowed with her hands and sometimes she somehow managed to row with her feet……pretty smart!

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The Trang An Grottoes have recently been opened for tourists, with an impressive, but empty, visitor centre, and what seemed like hundreds of rowboats just waiting for the swarms to arrive in peak season. We timed our visit for lunchtime to hopefully avoid any tour buses from Hanoi and were rewarded with the river pretty much to ourselves. It was so peaceful, with only the sound of the water lapping against the boat. We met only one or two other boats towards the end of our trip. It was very much, “up close and personal” to the towering limestone karsts. The kingfishers along the way were a stunning blue, taunting us with their rapid fly-bys, and the very shy snake that swam in front of us soon disappeared under the surface when he spotted us. It was such a lovely experience, and our boat lady did not try to sell us anything or ask for a tip, so we broke a golden rule, and gave her a large tip which she seemed generally surprised to get.

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The overnight train to Hue was dead on time and whilst it rattled a lot it was comfortable enough to get some sleep. Sadly our roommates, Swiss we think, were very unsociable despite us offering a snort of Hanoi Vodka. Fortunately, they were quiet so caused us no grief but it was a pity we couldn’t share some stories.

We selected our $15 hotel room including breakfast and a free beer, an idea more hotels should adopt we think. The restaurant also serves great cocktails at less than $2 each. We met up with Catherine, also en route from Cat Ba to Nha Trang, one evening and watched her stagger out of the restaurant after necking 4 of them! We also bumped into Chilla and Paul from Austria that we first met in Yuanshuo and then again on Cat Ba Island. They were due to leave the next day so we had dinner that night in a floating restaurant……very pleasant indeed!

We’ve been to Hue before but decided to use it as a place to break up the journey south. We also wanted to do one of the trips again, The Tombs of The Kings, as we now know much more of the history hopefully making the tour more meaningful. It was, as expected, a great trip and as we opted not to include a tour of the Citadel, we were put into a group of just 5 and taken to visit to a 100 year old traditional Vietnamese house and garden occupied by a very unassuming lady. Inside the wooden house there was a wonderful display of pictures of her ancestors and outside a serene garden with a myriad of fruit trees and spice shrubs. The trip was broken up with an excellent buffet lunch which we hadn’t bargained for. Our ticket price was to include a simple lunch. Being cheapskates, we opted not to upgrade for 50,000VND. By the time we got to lunch the tour guide seemed to have forgotten what we had paid and were cordially invited to tuck into a grand buffet along with everyone else.

Next day, we went further south to Quang Ngai which was to be just a stopover to break the 13 hour journey to Nha Trang. After a long walk we found ourselves at the Central Hotel (not so central) and managed to blag a room upgrade….nice one! We had a long walk from the station to the hotel, followed by a long walk around town and not a single westerner in sight……we appear to be the only ones here, hence all the strange ogling.

Tomorrow we’re on the final leg of our journey to Nha Trang, just a rather dull 7.5 hours on the train.