The trip to Nim Bin is one of those “must do” tours when you are in Hanoi, and it was the last on our itinerary before heading south to Cambodia and Da Nang.
We booked this tour through Tripadvisor, there are a couple of itineraries to choose from, one has a longer boat trip than the other, it wasn’t really clear how to make a choice so we flicked a coin to save on brain power.
The trip sets off at the crack of dawn with an early pick up that leaves you scrambling for some breakfast before it the hotel officially opened. To make matters worse, I had picked up some sort of horribly runny nose kind of cold and was not in great shape.
It is a long journey from Hanoi, about 3 hours to get there, and all the while the day is warming up. Nim Binh is the name of the area and there are a number of things going on, first activity involves climbing up a near vertical staircase to get to the top of a mountain and we assumed a temple of some sort. It was quite evident from the state of the people coming back down that this was going to be a hot and sweaty climb, and so it was.
The entrance involves some walks through huge fields of water lilies, with the inevitable South Koreans getting dressed up and having their photos taken in wedding outfits, while we took selfies of ourselves and tried to avoid having them in the background, though I am sure I was in in a few of theirs!
In truth, I don’t think it actually took much more than 20 minutes to climb the stairs, but it felt a lot more and was hard work on the heart and the knees in humid 40c conditions, especially when you have a cold.
On the way up there are lookouts where you can have a breather and admire the views down to the river where the tourist boats move in and out of the limestone caves, this is the post lunch activity.
When you get to the top of the climb, firstly you find the recently built Bich Dong Pagoda, after that you can join the queue to get a selfie with the recently built dragon as well, this is a rather precarious exercise on sharp rocks with hoards of young people getting their Instagram photo.
You then realise that Bich Dong has no historical or religious relevance, like many the tourist attractions it has been built for tourists to climb and have their photo taken, other than that it has no purpose. To be fair to their tourist people, it works because there were hundreds of people clambering up and down the path. There is a statue of the mountain lion in the cave, with some vague reference to a fable, but mainly it makes a good photo, this is brilliant marketing.
After the climb, it was back on the bus and off to the ancient capital of Vietnam, Hoa Lu. On a hot and humid day after that hard climb, all we wanted was shelter but there wasn’t any. This is potentially a really interesting place because it dates back to the 10th century so lots of history, but not really that much to look at if I was honest.
We then headed to a little restaurant with great aircon, but first we had to go on the bike ride around the village, which involved a close encounter with a local tractor, Wooksie hates bikes but I thought she did rather well not getting annoyed, but we did all get even sweatier.
It was then time to get in our boat which promised to be a bit cooler, until we actually saw the boat, which had no shelter from the sun. Luckily, everyone was issued with an umbrella for sun or rain. A few people decided they couldn’t take any more sun and didn’t want to sit cross-legged for 2 hours and opted out, so we were lucky to have a little more space in our boat.
The rowers were all women, and they were super strong, I bet they had 6 packs like washer boards as they stood up all the way and were rowing against the tide. We then realised that the passengers were expected to help, so the chaps got to work in the boat and before long we were in a race with the other boats, which helped pass the time, it isn’t easy being cramped in a boat for 2 hours, however stunning the limestone scenery is. In fact, there comes a point when the novelty of the limestone scenery does actually wear off, but it takes a couple of weeks.
The journey along the river took us through some huge caves, and it wasn’t clear to me if they were all natural or maybe some were man made to open up the river to tourists. Vietnams investment in tourisms has been huge and it wouldn’t be a surprise if the caves hadn’t been enlarged to take the traffic.
One of the highlights was a pagoda in the middle of a lake, once again great for photos but not sure it was actually used by the locals for anything. The best thing about these trips is the people you meet, and we had the company of a couple from California and enjoyed many laughs about the state of the world and the US role in the continuing chaos, lovely people. In the photo they even leaned forward so they didn’t spoil the picture, that’s them lying in the front of the boat!
So Nim Binh was the last of the tours in Northern Vietnam so it is now time to head to Cambodia and have a look around Da Nong and Hoi An, a few hundred miles south.
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