We had a great 3 days in Tam Cỗc. We visited the sites, enjoyed the vibe and had a good time exploring small roads by bike. We went for dinner to the same restaurant 3 nights in a row. The food and location was great, plus the owner charmed us with her energy. She even gave us a discount on our last night, and told us to come back soon.
From Tam Cốc, we needed to ride to Ninh Binh, about 6 miles away, to catch the overnight train to Hue. It’s a 10-hour journey, and so we booked a sleeper cabin for the trip. There was no way to book passage for our bikes on the website, but we figured we would just go early and they would find a way and we’d just need to pay a bit extra for the bikes. Didn’t quite work out that way…
Since we had all day before our train at 10:04pm, we lazed at the pool until our checkout at noon and then visited the Bich Dong Pagoda, a 15-minute ride from our place.
The Bich Ding Pagoda was pretty interesting! The lake entrance was probably the most photogenic and people were queuing up to take their Instagram shots in the archway, one after another. Once across the lake, there are some pagoda buildings built into the cave itself which was pretty cool.
The ride to Ninh Binh was on small roads and paths. I’m so impressed how our mapping apps route us on tiny paths sometimes and off large roads. Along the way, a scooter with 3 teenage kids went by us, and they were so friendly to us! We got to the train station in Ninh Binh early, and tried to get our bikes arranged, but for some reason there was no room for our bikes. This was kind of our worst fear. We enlisted a Vietnamese woman in the tourist information office to help, but it seemed that the answer remained the same.
The deal we were offered by the baggage lady was leaving our bikes with her that day, to send our bikes by another train the following day and the bikes would arrive in 2 days to Hue! Not what we wanted, and it’s always hard to truly understand what is going on when you don’t speak the language. We decided to get to our hotel and weigh our options. We had booked a hotel close to the train station so we could have a place to hang out, shower and rest before our 10PM train. The cost was $13 so it was a no brainer to just take care of ourselves.
The super nice lady who runs the hotel quickly told us what to do about the bikes. There was an overnight BUS that was going to leave from the hotel at 8PM and our bikes could go on that, arriving in Hue by 7AM the next morning, in time for our arrival. So, we did that…and next time we’ll just take an overnight bus since we know buses take bikes. The overnight buses also have beds and are pretty nice, so we have heard.
We toured around Ninh Binh for a couple hours, going through the market and also along streets of colonial French buildings. It seems like a working class town. We went back to the hotel and had some rice wine to bide our time. The nice lady went next door and got some of her mom’s private stash of rice wine that was like rocket fuel. We added some lime juice and water and it all went down well. We had dinner at the hotel, helped load our bikes on the bus and then went to the train station an hour ahead of time and sat with everyone else until the train arrived.
We had booked a sleeper so we got into our beds as soon as we boarded and slept fitfully with all the motion, but still way better than sitting upright. The sleeper compartment was basically wonderful…and we woke up properly at 7:30AM and drank coffee in bed like normal. Then we arrived in Hue, took a cab to our hotel and walked 10 minutes to the bus station hopefully to find our bikes! And YES…there they were! So cool when stuff actually works as planned.
We took a little bike tour around the citadel, leaving an official tour of the Imperial City for tomorrow when we have a bit more energy. Hue was the capital of Vietnam in the 1800’s and inside the citadel is the Imperial City. It’s a big area and there are numerous tombs here to visit.
For today, we had a yogurt coffee on the bank of one of the many canals within the citadel. We need to have the local coffee called Salt Coffee tomorrow.
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