04.01.2020

Today we took the bus, from Cat Ba to Tam Coc in the Ninh Binh area – famous for its rice fields and temples, such as the biggest Pagoda in south east asia.

Many people do a daytrip here or skip this area completely – a mistake as Mirte and me should discover in the next days.

We did not see much from Tam Coc this day and just strolled around the tiny intertwined streets in the evening, but where excited for the experiences to come:)!

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05.01.2020

We explored the Tam Coc area, by biking through its magnificent rice fields. Again, I cannot really tell a lot about it in words, but will let the pictures speak for itself mostly :)!

What I can tell is, that the whole experience was introducing me to a different world of muddy rice fields, sitting in between the mighty rocks which are rising in between them and are forming a surreal silhouette in the distance and jungle-like valleys right infront of us.
Farmers and other locals proceed through this magical landscape, by boat or scooter while wearing their caracterisitc rice field hats.

And Mirte and me in between everything.

After a while we decided to step into a wood house on the outskirts of a quiet town, which had the sign: Beer, Coffee, Food on the outside.

When we stepped inside however, we saw a dusty old interior, which seemed spookily empty. No people, no lights, no waitress, nothing.
Just a dog was walking through the ordered benches, which reminded on a old schoolbuilding – even the blackboard was still there.

In the same moment Mirte and me stepped into the house, a scooter arrived in the small yard. Under the helmet a mid-aged women became visible, which quickly began putting the lights on and running around the house, seemengly making all kind of preparations.

She didn’t speak much English and even though she told me, that she lived for 3 years in Leipzig, communication was still difficult.

Nevertheless Mirte and me had our meals around 15 minutes. I didn’t want to take any chances and stuck with the classic fried noodle, but Mirte felt a bit more adventurous and ordered a bread pancake, which turned out to be baguette filled with meat in all kinds of variations – impractical for a vegetarian.

Nevertheless we had a great time at our unconventional lunch possibility and already wanted to move on as we saw that the weather turned into the floods.

Appearantly our host saw our dissapointment in our faces and dissapeared somewhere in the primary school/bistro only to come back with a couple of raincoats for Mirte and me.

After a couple of sentences she made us undstamd that we should use them to get home safe and bring them back the next day.
What was probably completely normal for her, was one of the sweetest things I ever experienced and after declining her (for us overgenerous) offer a couple of times, Mirte and me eventually left our lovely host, protected by about 10 square meters of plastic.

Our next destination was the Hang Mua Cave and especially the pavilion.

In order to enable access to the pavilion – which is sitting on top of one of the huge Rocky Hills – 500 steps were carved inside the rock.

The climb was even more adventurous thanks to the weather conditions but the rainy mist also gave a magical feeling to the whole place.

Afterwards we cycled towards the Bich Dong Pagoda, still in pouring rain and gave back our raincoats on the way.

The Bich Dong Pagoda is a (Buddhist(?)) Temple, build into a cave on the edge of the countless ricefields.

It was an idyllic and peaceful place, which impressed me at the same time, since I have never been to a temple this big before.

Again, I will let the pictures mostly speak for itself:D.

In the evening, our hostel invited us to a “family dinner” together with other travellers and guests.
It was a lovely atmosphere, eating together with around 50 other explorers of this beautiful country and an amazing end to an amazing day.

We talked to an Italian expat who is now in the wine business in the US and an older woman from the UK who got a “blank travel cheque” from her children and was now exploring the world for several months apart from several other couples from Germany the Netherlands and France.

The food was just incredible. We had over ten different dishes to choose from, among them fried fish, steamed cabbage and spring roles – and so much more.

And all of that for the equivalent of 7 euros – including drinks.

When walking home a through the quiet streets of Tam Coc, feeling happy, satsfied and a little bit tipsy, an amazing day came to an end.