Into the Heart of Vietnam

Trip Start Oct 20, 2008

Trip End Jan 31, 2009

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Where I stayed

Thanh Thuy's Guest House and Hotel Ninh Binh

(Ninh Binh hotels)

Flag of Vietnam Ninh Binh, Vietnam
Monday, December 29, 2008

Woke up at 7am. Couldn't get much sleep because of people coming in throughout the night. I should have put on my earplugs. Ate the free bread, butter, jam and nescafe combo at Backpackers. As I was having breakfast, a British high school graduate sat at my table. He reminded me of my good friend Fuat Savas who had done a similar journey around the same age.

The hostel called a metered taxi which took me to the Giap Bat Bus Station. I paid 42,000 dong for a public minibus ticket to Ninh Binh. Just before I bought the ticket, a guy had jumped on to me asking where I wanted to go. At first, I couldn't understand what his deal was. Such guys in Syria would be doing it for the tip, but there is no place for tips in the Vietnamese culture. The guy took me to a minibus. . I tried to make sure that I was doing the right thing by showing my ticket to peole and shouting out "Ninh Binh, Ninh Binh". Honestly, the risk of being kidnapped did cross my mind, but then 5 more passengers boarded

Feet Rowing

. The minibus took off in half an hour. Soon, we were on the highway, heading towards the plantations.

Although I was expecting that the minibus would get packed later on, there even was a spare seat for my large backpack throughout the ride. The ride was fairly comfortable, other than that my head kept hitting the ceiling every time we went over a bump, and Vietnam's roads are full of them.

Arrived in Ninh Binh in 2 hours. I was expecting this place to be rural, but it was as urban as it gets in Northern Vietnam. To my surprise, this town of 53,000 people had better infrastructure than the Old Quarter in Hanoi. The buildings were in better shape and so were the roads. There was nobody insisting that I buy something from them. I carried my 20 kg of backpacks, the small and the large, for a couple kilometers until I finally got to Thanthuy's Guest House and New Hotel that LP highly recommended. It looked decent and the staff spoke good English. I checked into a clean room with a bathtub for $9 a night.
I told the owner's wife that I wanted to see an authentic Vietnamese village with as few tourists as possible. She informed me that Kenh Ga would be ideal. She gave me a very gentlemanly driver and a scooter for $7 a day

Mother and Child

. Hence, my driver friend Ving and I rode into the heart of Vietnam.
The villages in and around Kenh Ga were truely untouched. There were flooded rice fields and peasants with wide, straw hats everywhere. The children coming back from school were all shouting out "Hello!" to me.Some of the houses were quite surprisingly colonial, while others were just boxes of cement. Best of all, there wasn't a single tourist in sight. "I started traveling to see precisely this.", I told myself.
I believe that this was the life quality that most Vietnamese had no choice but to be satisfied with. 55% of this country works in the agriculture sector. The interesting was that it didn't seem too foreign to me. You can find similar villages in Southeastern Turkey. However, you can't find a run-down city like Hanoi. The Communist Party must have prioritized the village over the city...
Finally, Ving stopped at the river bank and told me to buy a ticket for the coat ride for 35,000 dong. So I did. I boarded a low and long, faluka-type boat with an elderly Dutch couple. So many Dutch adventurers, but not a single Turkish one... The couple had sold their homecare companies and were doing a luxurious off-the-beaten-track tour of Southeastern Asia. As the boat floated away, we saw ladies collecting oysters, men fishing, girls rowing with their feet and boys taking a bath in the river

On the Boat

. When the sun finally got out of hiding, the urge to take photos became irresistable. I started photographing anything and everything.
I was mesmerized with what I had seen. Out of happiness, I tipped Ving $3, which is something I've never done during my journey. Let me remind you that $3 is big bucks in this country; it's even bigger if you pay it in dollars instead of dongs.
There were so many Germans at the hotel. The only exception was an elderly book editor who kept talking about classical music.
The food served at the hotel was filling but far from tasetly. Well, what do you expect...
After I typed up my blog entry for yesterday, I visited the CIA World Factbook site for economic data on a few countries. I realized that Vietnam is the poorest country that I have ever been to with a GDP per capita of slightly over $2,500. Almost half of that of Syria...