I really like the hotel room I stayed in last night. I mean I don't like the fun sized hot water heater that produces just enough hot water to adjust the temperature from scalding to comfortable before starting to run out of hot water (but almost every hotel room in Vietnam so far has had this problem). And I don't like the dense not very thick nor very soft mattress (again, almost every hotel room in Vietnam so far). Or the tiny little pillows. But, you know, other than the primary requirements for a hotel room, it's pretty nice.
Honestly, I do like the hotel I stayed in last night. The lone window opens to the hall and it's quite quiet and dark inside. The fan, which I have turned off, is a nice vigorous ceiling fan which would definitely keep the place nice and cool in weather than needed cooling. Instead of operating a reading light, one of the light switches next to the bed turns on an LED night light that produces enough light to find the bathroom while still being dim enough that you won't wake yourself with the bright white fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling.
The hotel has other advantages too like a restaurant nearby, a dedicated motorcycle parking room, and a large clearly printed sign inside the room with the wifi name and password. It's also very cheap. I paid about $7 give or take.
The weather continues to be uncooperative and it was gray and chill outside when I left. I am far far too many days into a tropical country to be unpacking my sleeves and my thermal vest.
I suppose I've only just gotten back to the same longitude as Haikou and I know Haikou's winter weather is rubbish but still, I expected warmth. Not blister my skin and force me to drink 13 liters of water in one day just to be able to pee type warmth like I got in Malaysia three years ago but warmth nonetheless. This is not warmth. This is very definitely not warmth. I am not warm.
Stopping on the way at one of the many many churches because I like their statue of Rio Jesus, I follow the QL12B to Phát Diệm. It is both less and more than I remember. As cathedrals go, the blending of European and Asian architecture is interesting but it's also a pretty poor example of a cathedral. It's just a bunch of the same kind of buildings the local old Buddhist temples are made out of only bigger (two storey instead of one). There's a nice door or two, and some interesting statues but the carvings are not exactly what you would call "great art" and the interiors are mostly closed off. I had a very nice coffee while looking for lunch (they didn't serve food) and a second very nice coffee when Francis Ng (who isn't keeping a trip journal) parked his bike next to mine.
After Francis took his leave, I circled the pond area in front of the cathedral two or three times checking all of the cafes on the square only to find that none of them had any food more than sunflower seeds! Apparently, this is an area where people come to sit and drink and chat and not an area where people come to sit and eat and chat. I finally ended up eating some banana fritters and fried corn cakes from a street vendor.
Old bike inside the cafe where I later met Francis Ng
After I'd eaten, I bit the bullet on parking my bike and leaving it somewhere I couldn't see it by trusting that the parking guard at the regular motorcycle parking would be okay. I then took a wander through the complex. I suppose if it had been sunny or if I had someone with me or if I'd just spent a significant portion of the day getting here by local mass transit (three conditions that very much were the case in 2006), I'd find a reason to spend more time but it wasn't sunny, I didn't have anyone with me, and, unlike when traveling by bus, spending a significant portion of the day getting here is a feature rather than a bug. So, after taking a handful of photos to satisfy the promise to my boyfriend that I would take photos of things we no longer had photos of, I left and continued cycling.
12 years ago this gate was open and had a bunch of pushy beggars in front of it. I suspect that is part of why there were donation boxes for the poor prominently scattered about the grounds of the cathedral.
When you compare it with some of the other architecture that was going on in the region at the time, it's sort of impressive but mostly it's a mishmash
After taking some pictures of a church about 100 years more recent than the cathedral as well as some of the other churches in town (it's a very churchy town), I bicycled to Ninh Bình by way of yet another church. It showed up on google maps as the Cathedral of Music but, with the exception of a very inaccessible and interesting gothic bit that was falling down in a "possibly bombed during the Vietnam War" way, it was dull and modern.
What I find particularly interesting about these two guys is that they are basically in the exact same position as the door guardians at the local Buddhist temples
It looks kind of like a flagpole with the exception of clearly not being a flagpole. These showed up near temples for four or five kilometers then stopped.
After an increasingly uncomfortable ride with dust, trucks, a few factories, and the ever present half burnt and still burning rotting garbage that seems to be one of the primary features of main roads, I found myself—quite unexpectedly—in a large city. It would seem that even though I remembered the name Ninh Bình, Mike and I hadn't actually stayed in Ninh Bình, we'd stayed in the nearby town of Ninh Thắng next to Tam Cốc.
Even before I found tourist central, I kept bumping into foreigners. Two Russians heading to Laos on a motorbike they bought yesterday on Cat Ba Island. A blond American man on a mountain bike. So. Many. Foreigners. And no sign of the sleepy little dusty town where we'd gotten off of the Hop-On-Hop-Off bus to Ho Chi Minh (we actually bought one way tickets and only bought them this far) in 2006. Back then, there'd been one maybe two hotels. We've spend the past decade referring to the owner of our hotel as Mr. Fawlty (from Fawlty Towers) because, even with the touristy boat tour and the goat sausage restaurant, it was such an unlikely place for anyone to ever open—let alone try to run—a hotel.
There was a resort. More than one. With a swimming pools even. And a hostel. And bars. Plural. A multiplicity of bars. T-shirt sellers. A vegan restaurant. I'd been warned to expect change but I have to say I'm not sure I was expecting such a profound level of change.
I biked past the start of the boat tour down through the karst peaks to the end of the road. Asked one of the dozens of white people coming down from the temple if, in fact, they'd been able to climb up on top of the karst. They had. Which means it was almost certainly the temple we visited. But it was getting close to dark and, all things being equal, given the amount of time I think I'd probably like to spend climbing around this temple, I'd rather wait until morning to park a borrowed bike belonging to my hotel.
Dinner was initially chosen on the basis of the number of people inside eating and the big TripAdvisor Recommended Restaurant sign but they were a massive pain about allowing me to lean my bike against unoccupied tables out in the rain wanting instead to lean it against all sorts of things that weren't visible from indoors and wouldn't support it. I left and went across the street where maybe the food wasn't as good but, then again, maybe it was.
Women doing laundry on the steps near where the tourist boats launch from
