NINH BINH AND GONE!

Good morning from a very sunny Ninh Binh province. It's currently 18 degrees and glorious here. So today we're supposed to travel back, hi, we're supposed to travel down to Vinh today but on the recommendation of one of our TikTok followers, JPG or JPEG, however he likes to be known as, we decided to stay up here a bit longer. So we're going to go from where we are now to about 20 minutes down the road to a place called Tam Coc and then yeah do some stuff there. So I'm gonna go for breakfast and we'll see you in a bit. And just like that we're here, Tam Coc. I'll show you what £21.50 a night gets you in this lovely little town next to the river where people row with their feet, apparently. So here's our room. It's all right, look, she's there. There's no fridge, no safe but it has got a bedside table which is much needed. She's already on the bed. Shower, toilet, sink. What more do you need? Let's test the bed. Yeah, it's good. We had a bit of an unpack and we thought we'd come out and have a bit of an explore of Tam Coc. So this is from directly outside of our homestay. It's a smoother stand, a supermarket there. Hello, how are you? And the boat and lake is just here. I think the plan is we're gonna try and get on one now. It doesn't look to be too busy at the minute, it's quite clean and proper. But the plan is we'll try and do that and then we'll sort out a bite. So yeah, skip to us hopefully on a boat. Is there a shorter one, a shorter trip? 250 and how long is that? Okay, we won't be. Yeah, that would be fine, yeah. Okay, where do we go? Okay, so we get on the little electric car that will take us to the other ticket office and then that'll bring us back here. And it's that ticket office where we can get this shorter trip that's Okay, lovely, thank you. Okay, looks like there's two separate ticket offices and we need to get the little electric bus thing to get to the other one. So that first tour was like 350,000 dong, we'll put the price up here. And that's quite a lengthy one. It involved electric bus. So going up the river electric bus to go and look at some other stuff which we're not really bothered about doing it just want to go on the boat. I just want to see a guy peddling with them with his feet. So we've asked about the shorter one. So that's what we're gonna try and get the tickets for. That's an hour and 40 minutes 250,000. So it's not really the money. It's just more I can't really be bothered to go on a massively long boat tour. So we'll see if we can get this little electric bus then to get the tickets for the short one. Get an electric bus from here. Yeah, to a ticket office. Yeah. And then back to here. Yeah. Makes no sense. It does make no sense. Hello. And do we get here to get tickets for tickets? Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. I have zero confidence in his reaction that we're actually on the right bus. Oh, we're off. Okay, hang about. Literally no idea where we're going. Yeah, it just seems crazy that the other ticket office isn't together. Or if it's a shorter journey, then take us up to the starting point for the shorter journey. Yeah, we have a little electric bus to go up to the other ticket office to get the tickets for the shorter journey to then get the electric bus to go back to that ticket office to then get on the boat, which doesn't seem very efficient. I don't know why they just don't open a separate ticket booth there or just sell their tickets there. But the TikTok page has got, our TikTok page has got random things that people put in a moment. If you're interested in some of the things that we've seen, go over and have a look at that because there's really some quite funny things. I totally get that they do that all the time over here. And I know they do it in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. But it still makes us laugh. It's just a bit of fun. So yeah, if you want to have a look at some really random ---- they put on vines over here, then go check that out. It's the same name as this channel. So never too old to travel. Okay, seem to come to a stop over there. Okay, thank you. Right, we've been pointing to this ticket office, which was like, I don't know, a few minutes away. Got a guy leading the way. It's probably to make sure we don't like get lost on the 20 meter journey from the bike to the ticket office. Yeah, this two tickets for the shorter journey on the boat. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Can you have two tickets, please? Thank you. Thank you. I can do it. I'm okay. Organized chaos. What do you want me to go? Do you want to be in the middle or at the front? I'll go in the middle because I'm heavier. Ballast. Just saying, this looks ******* horrendous. There's a lot of noise. This is me getting on. We're in. Don't know how long we're in for, but we're in. Have I ever told you about how much Alina loves boats? I'm doing it, aren't I? I am doing it. She's doing it for the view. So it's nothing but mountains and, well, mountains or wine. That's the two things you'll get on boats for. There's our driver. Hello. Hi. So this is the Ninh Binh boat tour. An hour and 40 minutes of this. No, I'm guessing we might see other stuff eventually. Anyway, I'll shut up. I'll let you enjoy the scenic tranquilness of this place. This is what we come for. Just relax. Use your feet. I'm still here. Still going. Still rowing. Even on the water, the whole photographer's trying to get your picture. We literally sat in front of a camera and she's trying to take our picture. Also, they drive these boats like they drive cars and motorbikes literally into each other. A little cemetery over there. Their cemeteries are so much nicer than ours. I mean, you just get shitty little headstones. They've got massive tombs. It's awesome. Another look at the scenery before the next cut. As promised, I thought I'd show you something cool when I come across it. Here it is. Not sure how good the GoPro footage will be in there, but I'll record on the iPhone and if the GoPro footage is ----, cut to the iPhone footage. Got a phone call. Even out here we get signal. We can't even get signal in my own house. So just a quick conversation off camera with our pilot, driver, captain. He showed us monkeys up on the cliffs up there. Yeah, I see them up there. We were saying in the next 10 days, the river level will rise. So it must be the rain coming down from the mountains. He says if you come in May, it's really beautiful. I think it's okay now. Yes, we have finally found a mountain goat. I don't know why, but since we arrived, I've just been obsessed. Oh, there's a couple. I've just been obsessed with finding mountain goats. There they are. Just said to the driver, if he wants to, you know, we can turn around now. We've had 45 minutes on a boat, plenty of time. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure. Look at them flowers we're carrying on. You're now my hostage. So it looks like we're finishing the tour. So we won't bore you with it, but cut to us, I don't know, looking for a motorbike. Here we are trying to get a bike. We decided to take a drive up to Ninh Binh Old Town and had quite good reviews. Just been driving around, no idea where we're driving. And we've come across this. Again, no idea what sort of building this is. It looks like it's something palatial, but this is maybe the most Christmassy I have seen Vietnam since we arrived. Take a walk up a little bit further. So there's a name on the building, but I still don't actually know what it is. So if you know, add a comment, please. That'd be really useful. But they have not spared on the lights. Something group by the looks of it. Yeah, I'll just pan back around so you can see. And there's Christmas trees galore here. I'm not really sure at what point it's not socially acceptable to have Christmas lights up anymore. I went to Zakopane a couple of years ago in Poland and they still had them up in February and they were really in keeping, so it was really snowy. But we've just followed some of the streets down and there's palm trees covered in lights and then Christmas trees on the other side, which is a little bit odd. It's a bit nice this, isn't it? Let's see if we can get around this roundabout one handed. Skills! One lonely little boat on its way back in. This is the first of two pagodas. People are taking their shoes off before they go in. There's one behind me there, and there's another one a little bit further up. I mean, these are pretty impressive. These are the biggest pagodas we've seen since we've been here. A bit disappointing there's no info board. And there's the other one. Sucker for an info board. What have we got on this one? Heart of Cayenne Lake, Silver Pagoda. I was just reading, having a little look. I wasn't reading the whole thing. There you go. You wouldn't want the whole thing. I'm still going to read the whole thing. Slightly less impressed now. These were built in 2017, finished in 2019. I thought they were going to be really ancient or something, so it's just more of a tourist attraction really. There's something interesting. Do I? Go on then. They were built in 2017, finished in 2019. That is the benefit of reading an info board. So much for the ancient tour. Yeah, not so ancient. So it's a bit of a whistle-stop tour around here tonight, because we're going to go to the Muir Cave. That's probably not pronounced correctly. Dragon on a Mountain. Dragon on a Mountain. So we're going there tomorrow. 500 steps. I believe if you get up early, that's the best opportunity to go up there and get photos without too many tourists. Which is ironic because we're tourists. And Trev just wants to get his drone back out again and get some good footage. There you go. Hello, I'm from Ninh Binh. And what's your name? My name is Thi. It's what, sorry? Thi. Wow. And this guy, we just stopped to talk to him because he wanted to learn to speak English. He's better at English. So we spent five minutes just talking to him. He does really good and he's a really good singer. So, you know, if you come across him in Ninh Binh, say hi. Sportful choice for a bottle of tea and food down here. Say hello. He's down at the sweet shop all the way along with it. Trev's found us somewhere to eat that apparently has got good chairs that don't involve him and his creaky knees. So we're heading back. This is the easiest sell ever. Thank you. Well, that wasn't a hard sell, was it? Trev had already worked out he was going to eat it. This cafe's got the right idea. He knows how to draw a crowd. He's got the Vietnamese football match on. And just look at the tables outside. Good morning from a very sunny and warm Ninh Binh, where it is 10 to 12, so almost lunchtime. And it's 21 degrees and sunny. I don't need to tell you that though, you can see. It's gorgeous here this morning. Been out for a run, had a bit of an explore around. We were planning on going up to the Muir Caves, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, which is the famous dragon. You walk 500 steps up to the top, get incredible views. It opened at 6 a.m. and the plan was to get up early, get there, climb the steps and get some amazing footage and just really take it all in to see the sunrise. However, Trev was very, very sick last night, possibly got food poisoning from one of the hotels that we ate in. Ironically, you don't seem to get poorly when you eat street food because they're constantly cooking it and it's always fresh. But I understand some of the hotels do store the food. But yeah, he was really poorly. So he's only just got up out of bed and showered. So yeah, we've decided to unfortunately give that a miss today. Plus side is it's an excuse for us to come back at another stage. But just a bit of an easy one today in Tampcock because we are getting on our train later tonight to Da Nang. So he needs to start feeling better for that. So yeah, he's been a little bit peaky and a little bit sorry for himself. Not his usual sarcastic self. Might be a nice quiet day. Anyway, we're going to go get some food. Didn't have to go far to find a nice spot. So we found a restaurant here, which is called the Cozy Garden. I'll just show you Trev's happy face and one thing, the magnificent view. We literally sat down and straight away come over with some tea and then pretty good menu. And to give you an idea, I'm probably going to have the stir fried beef with onion and pineapple, which is a hundred thousand dong. But what drink are you going to have with it? Clearly I'm going to have a beer. The beer here seems to be quite cheap. So I'll just go to the page with the drinks. Yeah. And Hanoi beer, which we've been drinking a lot of, or the Saigon beer is 20,000. So and the soft drinks are 15,000. So the price is up here, but yeah, it seems pretty reasonable. Um, Trev, is there any point asking if you're eating anything today? I'm eating water today. Just water. This would be a very cheap round. Yeah. So we're cut to the food. So while somebody enjoys a nice fried rice with pineapple and beef and stuff, I'm going to have some guava juice and some water because I can't eat anything. That was nice. Tasted really good. I know sooner when he said he was looking forward to his guava juice than this happened. I just can't take him anyway. He's not having a good day. Bless him. He's really not having a good day. Guess we'll have to order another one. And the food hasn't disappointed. Look at that. It's not as good as my guava juice though, is it? Trev's ordered another guava juice to replace the one that ends up all over the table and all over the floor. Doesn't look like he's wet himself at all. Tastes as good as it looks. Definitely doesn't disappoint. Come for a bit of a walk before we head off to the train station. Just in the main square of Tam Kok. A bit of impromptu dancing going on over here. Pretty cool. It's been at least 15 minutes since I've eaten, so let's have a look what there is here. So they don't have beer on the menu, but she clearly saw me and thought she looks like she needs a beer. So she's getting one from under the counter for me. You can't buy that for service. And Trev is going to finally brave eating some food. Some mango sticky rice. He's reached that point in the day where he thinks he can stomach it. Been forced to. It's probably a good idea that he eats before we get on this train. Evening from Lim Bin train station where we're heading on a night train to Da Nang. How happy is that going to make you? Not happy at all. She loves trains almost as much as boats. See if we need to get tickets. We've already got tickets, but see if we need to get extra tickets. If you got that, you're better than I am. Seems we've been sent to another desk. No idea why. Ah, so you can scan the tickets. Okay, thank you. Trains, we've just been to the shop and mostly drinks, but a few snacks as well. We've already had something to eat. Yeah, I'm hoping to, once we get on, well actually what I'm really hoping is we get on and we've got the little cabin to ourselves, but it's unlikely. I'm meant to be sharing with two others. But I'm hoping that we get on and fairly quickly get settled and I manage to sleep and wake up refreshed in Da Nang. But yeah, cut to us boarding the train. And here comes the train. There's a disco in there. Literally a disco in a bar area. And a disco that's music. I don't know if the camera caught it, but there was a carriage with disco lights, a bar and music, which is quite cool, but it looks like it's right up the other end from where we're going to be. Oh, perfect. Is that us? Oh, that way. Okay, bit of a squeeze to get in. Nice toilet area, sink area. We are 15 and 16. So, is it this one? Is this 15 and 16? I'm guessing so. Boarded. No sooner have we boarded than we're leaving the station. I've left Trev to try and fight getting the bags in and I'm just going to pop the toilets. Ah, thank you. Just going to pop down to the toilet. So, that's the little sink area of the journey. There's some toilet roll, which is a bonus because I've come down in a bit of a hurry and I've brought my tissues with me. But yeah, so it looks to be clean at the moment. I'm not sure if I can stay that way. These are our roommates for the night. Hello. And Trev's managed to get up there. It's a little bit tight. He's made it as long as he doesn't move again. How did you get up? Great difficulty. You've got to do mountaineering to get across. There's a handle at the other side, look. Oh, now you tell me. Oh, that was really undignified. So, we're on the train now. We've just come around with a nice little welcome letter. Very nice touch. So, some drinks and snacks included and also complimentary Wi-Fi. Let's see how good it is. I mean, that's not bad for train Wi-Fi. I mean, don't know how long it'll last that good. Not bad. Beer and coffees and then shortly after, there's a lady came around with a drinks trolley with wine, beer, soft drinks. It's not like me to turn down alcohol, but I can't risk going to the toilet because I've been trying to get back down there. So, I'm just not going to try and drink at all. I have got what gave me that put some water in, but I'm going to hopefully conserve it and just sip it when needed. But Trev's sorted over there. We've got our suitcases under the beds below and we've got two really nice travel companions. I think we're sorted. So, I think I'm going to try and settle down. I don't know what time it is now. 20 past 10. I think I'm going to try and get settled and leave Trev talking to his new friends and see how we get on. It's five past eight and kind of all right actually. Woke up a few times at 20 to four and then at 20 to seven. There's no getting away from the train. The bed is very, very hard. So, every time we turn over, it's like, I don't know, I do feel quite achy today. But I did get some sleep, which is quite good. We should get into Denang around half 12-ish, maybe 12, half 12. The guys just come round and see if everyone wants complimentary tea or coffee. I'll just show you how the wings are. Not much review from the top bunk. But yeah, it's been all right. The duvet was really comfy, really warm. I brought my phone, which you can't see. And this little light switch. Not much needed. Eye mask with some headphones in it. I'd definitely recommend it. It does get quite noisy when you go to the stops. So, yeah, it's reasonably comfortable. It's just a bit hard, but a lot of mattresses over here are anyway. So, yeah, time to try and get down these steps, I think, so I can go and brush my teeth and get myself a bit more woken up. I'm just kind of piping music through the main carriage now. So, whether you want it or not, it's time to wake up. It's quarter to nine in the morning. The ultimate wake up call. Nearly at Da Nang. Here to see. I've got to say, I was expecting a terrible night's sleep. I've actually slept really, really well. Apart from it feels like you're sleeping on concrete, but just turn over, you're all right. Yeah, good air con. All in all, a good experience. That's what room we're in. Shared with two guys from the Netherlands, I believe. Nice guys. One called Patrick, one called no idea how to pronounce. Yeah, it's good. Nice little tour on the train. It's lovely and clean. It's really good. Nice and clean. Keep it really clean. Checking it all the time. Lovely, look at this. Scenery's changed a bit. I don't know what she's doing. Working, she says. Quarter to twelve. We should be coming into Da Nang at any minute. Bye-bye. One big drop down if you've got luggage. Arrived. Let's go get a grab to our taxi. Grab to our hotel or grab to our taxi? Let's go get a grab to our hotel and yeah, cut to us properly settled and sorted and arrived in, I've forgotten where we are. Where are we? Da Nang. Thank you all for watching. If you've enjoyed this video and you like what you see, give us a like and a subscribe. Follow us along on our journey. See you on the next one.