The flight I booked many months ago from Danang to Hanoi had been changed by five hours and I'm now leaving in the dark so while I wait in the airport in Danang, I finally get to see a sunset.
Now, instead of getting into Hanoi in the daylight hours, I will arrive in the dark. I hate arriving in a strange city in the dark. On that note, I arrange for my hotel to send a driver to pick me up from the airport. Taxis in the dark in strange cities I've not previously been to make me nervous especially when I have no idea where the airport is situated in conjunction to my hotel.
I pick up my luggage and really like the fact that before you can exit out of the luggage pickup area, you must show your luggage claim tag to ensure it matches the tag on your luggage. That's a great security feature, as I recall very recently a woman in Vancouver complaining to the media that her luggage was stolen from YVR because the airport lets any Tom, Dick, or Harry into the domestic arrivals area who can then pick up your luggage and walk out with it.
I find the driver standing with my name on a sign. He takes my luggage to his brand new fancy Toyota Corolla. I spend my ride admiring his car and taking in the sights. Cars in Vietnam are taxed very heavily which is one of the reasons why there are so many more motorcycles in Vietnam than cars. Luxury tax on cars Ho Chi Minh, for example, has over 7 million motorcycles and 8 million people. That's one heck of a lot of motorbikes!
The airport is 30 km out of the city. It takes us an hour to get to the hotel. $18 US is a steal of a deal considering the distance. I don't pay the driver directly as I will pay the hotel which, I presume, takes a cut of this money and then pays out to the driver.
We arrive at my hotel and, of course, I am met at the door and someone takes my luggage. I check in and tell them I need to be on the 6:00 AM train to Ninh Binh. The hotel arranges for a taxi to pick me up at 5:15 AM to take me to the train station and tells me that they will pack me a breakfast to go. Geez, such good customer service by hotels in Vietnam.
I am shown to this very tiny room on the second floor. I hate the room. Hate it! It is so small I can barely lay my suitcase on the floor. I have to turn sideways to get into bed. It's got a wet shower but at least it has a shower curtain to go around which should alleviate the toilet and the entire floor surface from getting wet (I hope). Argh! The window looks out at a brick wall. I look through my paper work and recall that after my Ninh Binh trip when I return to this hotel, I had specifically asked for a room with a balcony. Hopefully my next room in this hotel is better than this room.
I am up at 4:30 AM. I have to take my luggage to the lobby as they will store it for me until I return from Ninh Binh. I can only take a small backpack with me so everything else stays behind, including my laptop which makes me nervous wondering if my suitcase will be safe left behind for three days but I have no other option.
I go downstairs to the lobby and both men who are working the night shift are sleeping. One is sleeping on the sofa in the lobby and one is spread out over two armchairs. The doors are locked shut with a cable lock. Being locked inside a hotel surely must be a safety hazard. (I digress in telling you that a hotel in Guanajuato, Mexico did this too.) Both men wake up and I feel bad for waking them. I have to pay for the night's stay and the car that picked me up from the airport. I also mention that I was told they would have a breakfast packed for me. One half-awake man goes into the kitchen to put together some food for me: a bottle of water, a bread bun, some Laughing Cow cheese, a packet of strawberry jam, some rice crackers and a banana. Not too shabby. I can eat all of that stuff - nothing too strange or weird.
Hanoi is fairly quiet at 5:15 AM but there are signs that the city is starting to come to life at this time of the morning. The train station is less than a 15 minute car ride. It's drizzling rain. First real rainy gray day I've had on this trip except for the sporadic rain I had on the day I went on the bicycle tour in Hoi An.
The train is humongous. I can't see either end of it. I get onto a car and find a seat. There aren't many of us on this train.
I purchased my train ticket on line from home in Vancouver about a month before I left as apparently some of these routes can sell out. There are two seat options: a hard wooden seat or a more expensive soft seat. I chose the latter, of course, for a whopping total of about $17 for a two hour train ride. Geez, travel is so cheap in this country.
After I sit there a bit and watch people get on the train and then study the seat backs I am thinking I'd better double check my ticket. Oh... I see that I have a specific seat I am supposed to be sitting in AND a specific car! I double check, car #6 - I am in car #6. That's good. But I'm in the wrong seat so I move down the car. As soon as I vacate the seat, a guy who was sitting across the aisle from me moves into the seat that I had vacated. Why he didn't tell me I was sitting in his seat is beyond me.
I foolishly left my Ipod and headphones locked in my suitcase. Didn't want to pack unnecessary stuff. Little did I realize how fricken noisy it is inside Vietnamese trains. Not noise from the train itself (it's definitely much quieter than the skytrain in Vancouver) but from Vietnamese talking. There was a group of four of people seated behind me listening to their phone on speaker (without headphones); and then the train cranks up the TVs to boot. OMG, I have to suffer through two hours of this and it's only 6:00 AM!
The train stops about three times on the way to Ninh Binh. Each stop lasts only long enough for people to hop off or on and for the train men to drop off any boxes along the route. The entire two hours is a steady procession of staff wheeling food carts up the aisles selling rice, soup, and coffee. By food carts I mean big pots of hot and smelly food, not the sort of prepared food dishes that an airline hands out.
We arrive in Ninh Binh right on time at 8:17 AM. There are about a half-dozen guys standing around looking at all the people who are getting off the train. I have no clue what my guide Toan looks like. I just look at each guy and then one guy looks at me and says "Brenda"? Yes, it is Toan. We shake hands and walk to his motorcycle. He is much younger than I was expecting. He looks as if he's in his mid-20's.
[NB: Well as I tell this story now that I'm back in Vancouver, I find out from the Trip Advisor forum that my guide was actually Toan #2 and not THE Toan that everyone talks about. It's a bit of a funny story but apparently THE Toan #1 got so popular but he didn't want to turn away business so he would send out his nephew Toan #2 to guide people. Meanwhile Toan #1 doesn't tell anyone he is doing this, only through discussions on Trip Advisor do people put 2:2 together and realize there are in fact two Toan's (Toan #1 and Toan #2 - Uncle and nephew). When I emailed Toan #1 I specifically asked him if he would be my guide and he assured me he would be. I was none the wiser until I posted on the Trip Advisor Forum that I was surprised at how young he was. Others in the know piped in and said I was assigned Toan #2.]
I had better take advantage of the opportunity to use a bathroom before we leave the train station. I had to pay for this privilege of using the stinking bathroom (literally stinking!), and she tried to get me to buy toilet paper too but I pulled out my own stash.
We get on Toan's motorcycle and head out of Ninh Binh. Within the first 10 minutes I am already ooohing and ahhing. Toan tells me to just tell him to stop whenever I want to stop and take photos. I didn't tell him to stop these first few views as I was expecting to see so much more of this ahhhhsomeness over the next three days. Little did I know that it would start to rain and barely let up throughout our trip.
We stop to look at the first of many rice fields. Toan is excellent at explaining all that we are looking at and how rice farming is done.
I take advantage of this stop to get dressed a lot warmer. I put on a long sleeved shirt and my polar fleece underneath my raincoat and a head buff that I had bought specifically for this trip. After three days, the head buff would come to be one of the best investments ever. It kept my ears and face warm while on the bike and I slept with it on my head at night time and otherwise would wear it like a turtle neck. Soooo glad that I bought it for this trip. Luv my headbuff.
We stop along a river and watch women Collecting Snails. Toan says it is a very hard job as they are standing in the water from morning until night. As you can see, they have on what appear to be normal street clothes. Toan says the women are most likely uneducated so they do whatever work they can find. The snails are collected to feed to pigs.
I take advantage of this stop to get dressed a lot warmer. I put on a long sleeved shirt and my polar fleece underneath my raincoat and a head buff that I had bought specifically for this trip. After three days, the head buff would come to be one of the best investments ever. It kept my ears and face warm while on the bike and I slept with it on my head at night time and otherwise would wear it like a turtle neck. Soooo glad that I bought it for this trip. Luv my headbuff.
We stop along a river and watch women Collecting Snails. Toan says it is a very hard job as they are standing in the water from morning until night. As you can see, they have on what appear to be normal street clothes. Toan says the women are most likely uneducated so they do whatever work they can find. The snails are collected to feed to pigs.
 |
| Collecting snails |
We are definitely in farm country. We pass by massive mounds of sugar cane piled on the sides of the road. This goes on for a couple of miles. Toan looks for smoke coming from one of the homes with the stacks of sugar cane so that he can show me what they do with the sugar cane stalks.
We don't have any luck seeing any smoke so Toan turns back to take another look. We pull over to a house with mountains of sugar cane. So huge are the mountains we literally have to climb over one of them to get into the yard.
There is no one working on the sugar cane at that moment but Toan just walks up to the work area and starts to explain things to me. The first massive vat we look at is the sugar cane being cooked down. I am not really concentrating on what he's telling me because I can't stop looking at this dead little chick or duck that is laying beside the huge vat. It didn't have any feathers on it so I don't know what it is or how it ended up where I spot it laying dead. It wasn't a newborn which is why it really captured my attention. I wonder how on earth it ended up as it did as it had obviously been living for more than a few weeks before its life ended beside a vat of boiling sugar cane.
There are about three steps/processes to do to come up with the end product "cane sugar". Toan and I dip our fingers into this vat and it is sweet and tastes exactly like molasses. Tasty. Mind you, I can't get over the fact that there are no safe food handling practices or manufacturing practices being followed. Flies are flying around and nothing is covered over and here we are sticking our finger into it. It really makes me think about the products we buy off the shelf at home and what and how they get put into a container and sold to us on the other side of the world.
When the sugar cane has been cooked and reduced to the proper consistency, it is poured into these bags (yes, these bags contain liquid sugar).
 |
| Liquid sugar ready to be sold. |
 |
| Sugar cane husks that will be fed to the animals. |
Perfectly straight rows of rubber trees. This is where the rubber is derived for tires, elastic bands, chewing gum etc. The rubber liquid from the tree is gathered in a similar fashion to maple syrup.
It's turning into dry season so there's a bit of an urgency to get this house and its foundation moved onto the river. You can see they are using logs and 45 gallon barrels to try to move the house. We watched them for awhile and I think they could've made some progress if they had a few more men helping them out as they didn't appear to make an inch of progress all the while we are watching them.
We stop for lunch. Toan orders us some tofu in tomato sauce and a beef dish with rice. It's all okay. Nothing spectacular but alright. As we're eating, there is a large group of people seated two tables away from us. From the way they are dressed, they look like they're in business (dressed like bankers). Toan says "they are talking about you - they want to take your photo". Apparently they don't see many tourists in this area so I am an interesting sight.
Another opportunity to use the bathroom. For the most part, the majority of the bathrooms I have been in, in Vietnam are spotlessly clean. Most of them have traditional flush toilets and a sink (rarely hot water). Some have toilet paper, some don't, and soap is hit and miss. I did use a lot of hand sanitizer on this trip. The floors of the bathrooms are very often much cleaner than bathrooms in North America.
We put our plastic rain suits back on and head out down the road. Our next stop is fascinating. We walk far into some rice fields and look at these amazing water wheels made completely out of bamboo. Well, 99% made out of bamboo. The ground posts and the one cross-section of post is a thicker wood than bamboo.
Another opportunity to use the bathroom. For the most part, the majority of the bathrooms I have been in, in Vietnam are spotlessly clean. Most of them have traditional flush toilets and a sink (rarely hot water). Some have toilet paper, some don't, and soap is hit and miss. I did use a lot of hand sanitizer on this trip. The floors of the bathrooms are very often much cleaner than bathrooms in North America.
We put our plastic rain suits back on and head out down the road. Our next stop is fascinating. We walk far into some rice fields and look at these amazing water wheels made completely out of bamboo. Well, 99% made out of bamboo. The ground posts and the one cross-section of post is a thicker wood than bamboo.
 |
| Hollowed out bamboo - now an irrigation pipe. |
 |
| All bamboo except for the two supporting posts and the cross bar attached to the two posts. |
 | ||||||||
| Bamboo water wheels. Bamboo irrigation pipes lead to the entirety of the rice fields in this area.
Here is some fascinating video of the water wheels in action: Water Wheels all made out of bamboo. The ingenuity is fascinating. W-o-w!
 
 
We travel on for another hour or two. I'm not even wearing a watch on this holiday so have no idea as to time. We pull up to an area of homes. Apparently this is our first night's stop. What a beautiful setting!
 The couple we are staying with, he and his five brothers live here. Their uncle lives up the hill behind them and their aunt lives down the hill in front of them. They are ethnic minority from Thailand and have been in Vietnam for four generations. 
Playing like the 6-yr-old that he is.
In Vietnam, kids start kindergarten at 3 years of age and go to to kindergarten to the age of 5. Toan said that when this boy was 3-yrs-old, he would walk 3 km to school by himself with no adult supervision! Now that he is 6, he rides his bike to school.
 Born at home. Washed off in cold water when he entered this world. If he survived the cold water, he was meant to survive. 
A cement kitchen is a relatively new concept. Typically the cooking happened in the main room but you would have to be hyper-vigilant to a fire sparking the palm roof on fire and burning down the entire home.
 The only furniture consisted of a low table to eat off of while seated on the floor. The cement kitchen area where Toan is standing was an add-on.   The owners do not use propane as it is expensive to use so they cook over the wood fire.   This is the only TV so all of the extended family comes to sit on the floor and watch it - satellite.  Typically the host family would eat with us but as their 1-yr-old can't sit still during a meal, only the man of the house ate with us to make the meal more enjoyable (according to Toan).
For a guy who says he hates cooking, this was the best meal I ate in Vietnam: spring rolls with mushrooms & pork; garlic potatoes (boiled & then fried lightly); pork and rice and the most delicious dipping sauce (all made from scratch by Toan). Of course we had to drink some homemade rice wine with our meal. It was tasty.
The preparation would make your stomach queasy. It did mine. The lady of the homestay was giving Toan a hand wrapping the spring rolls. She was squatted on the floor with a metal pizza-like tray on the floor. She opened the package of rice wrappers and they were touching the wood floor. She'd take a wrapper and place it on the tray and fill it full of pork and mushrooms. Then someone brought her some greens, but that person simply intentionally dropped the greens onto the wood floor. She took them and added them to the food she was preparing. OMG! Is it any wonder why I ended up with diarrhea the next day?
     The dug out logs... those are coffins soaking until they are needed.
After breakfast, Toan and I head out to go for a hike before we leave this home-stay. He gives me two options: a 15 km hike over the mountain to our next home-stay (and he will get someone to drive his motorbike there) or a much shorter hike and we will drive his motorbike to our next destination. I pick the shorter hike. I am not fit enough for a 15 km hike and especially not so on muddy trails in the rain. In the photo below, we started out in the valley below.  The lady of our home-stay was in this group carrying her 1-yr-old son (no baby strollers in this country).         Kids walking home from school. The extent of their English is "hello"; "how are you?' "I am fine" and any question asked after that is answered with giggles because they don't understand what they are being asked. Toan says this is the extent of any English they learn in school.
Toan tells me that he didn't learn any English in school. All that he now knows he learned from tourists. He has been guiding for eight years now. His English is excellent and he is very easy to understand when he speaks.
 "       The clothes on the horizontal bamboo pole are drying.    The lady from our home-stay family. She's aged 25. Her youngest of two sons is 1-yr-old
Here's an overview of this area where I spent the night: Area overview
Lunch that Toan cooked for me. Noodles with shredded egg (omelette) and tea.
I'm definitely not a fan of noodles but this was very tasty. I think that if Toan ever wants to change careers he could become a chef - his food was delicious.
SORRY - I know this photo is a duplicate but when I delete it, everything after the water wheels disappears. Argh!
As soon as we hike back to our home-stay, we gather our stuff together, suit up for rain and head on down the road again. Here's some video of the water buffalo trail that we rode out on. Riding away from our first home-stay
We are driving across a wooden bridge.
|
The butcher slaughters four pigs every morning. This is all he has left at 1:00 PM.
Toan is picking out some meat for our dinner.
This is the largest rice terrace in these parts.
Too bad the weather was such that I couldn't see much of it.
This is a tomb where deceased are laid to rest.
When a person dies, they are laid to rest in a tomb. All of their clothes and the possessions that meant something to that person are placed in the tomb with them. Everything is left here until eternity. Nothing left here is ever touched by human hands ever again - it's left to rot.
Eventually, even the roof will rot and cave in. It is never repaired or replaced.
Ahhh yah it's just a bit of a mucky ride.
It ends up being a short 90-minute ride to our next home-stay. Today we are staying on a farm owned by an older couple. The man retired from the Government and they bought this farm. One of their sons, daughter-in-law, and grandson live on the property in a separate home.
Here, I get my own separate bungalow too. This one requires that I climb up about eight mucky and slippery wooden steps. It has a nice veranda with table and chairs that overlook this gorgeous view.
My room. Sleeping on a cushion on the bamboo floor.
Yes you can see through the walls and the floor! That's a mosquito net overhead.
 |
| My bungalow overlooking the fish pond and rice fields. |
.
The house that the son and Daughter-in-law live in.
6-yr-old grandson at the home-stay. Watching cartoons.
View from the veranda of my bungalow
Look at all of those bananas.
I wonder if the tooth fairy visits Vietnam?
He's got a really good set up with his own shelter.
The main house at the home-stay
The outdoor sitting and eating area
Kindergarten across the road from our home-stay.
Do you think we're expecting rain? I have on 5 layers of clothes.
Notice the sinks in the background, that is where one of the ladies was washing laundry in the large metal basins.
Lunch stop.
The "restaurant" didn't look all that sanitary and my-oh-my you should've seen the bathroom!!!
The train station at Ninh Binh
Notice the sinks in the background, that is where one of the ladies was washing laundry in the large metal basins.
We're heading back towards Ninh Binh but first we have to get up the mucky mountain: A mucky ride.
The "restaurant" didn't look all that sanitary and my-oh-my you should've seen the bathroom!!!
The last two hours or so ride back to Ninh Binh was on a normal highway. The scenery was much different than the day previous but it was still interesting to look at. We passed by the biggest tourist trap ever - one that I wanted to go to when I was trip planning but seeing as it was raining I told Toan I would skip it. So glad I chose to skip it when we passed by as it was a sea of orange life jackets boating in a very long line through the limestone.
We arrive at the train station two hours earlier than scheduled due to the fact that I didn't want to stop to do the boat tour. At this point, I am damp and dirty and just want to sit inside a building to wait for my train. Toan and I say our goodbyes and give one another a hug goodbye. Such a nice man. It was a pleasure to spend three days with him.
I relax for two hours and drink two cups of hot ginger tea.
We arrive at the train station two hours earlier than scheduled due to the fact that I didn't want to stop to do the boat tour. At this point, I am damp and dirty and just want to sit inside a building to wait for my train. Toan and I say our goodbyes and give one another a hug goodbye. Such a nice man. It was a pleasure to spend three days with him.
I relax for two hours and drink two cups of hot ginger tea.
I guess this means I got off the well-worn tourist path and made a lot of wonderful memories
Honestly, this three day motorcycle tour was a trip of a lifetime - a memory of a lifetime. If I could go back in sunny weather and do this trip for a full week, I would! I think the rain made it all that much more memorable. I think of the photo ops I missed due to the rain and mist but it was a very special trip and I am SO VERY GLAD THAT I DID IT.
