After Cat Ba Island, we travelled back to Hanoi for one night before catching a 3 hour train to Ninh Binh / Tam Coc the following day. We arrived in Tam Coc, Vietnam on March 8th 2017.
Upon our arrival into the Ninh Binh train station, we needed transportation to take us the additional 20 minutes to our accommodation in Tam Coc. We hopped off the train with our bags and walked to a less populated area of the station to undo our backpack straps for easier carrying and hopefully avoid being bombarded with the usual sales pitch by all the taxi drivers. This didn’t appear to stop them from following us and offering to take us to our destination. We kindly said “No, Thank You”, and continued to fix our bags. Once the dust had settled and we were ready to find a taxi driver, we were approached by a very nice man who said “taxi”. We asked how much to Tam Coc. He spoke “zero” english, and had to show us how much he would charge using the money from his wallet. The amount was slightly higher than the going rate we’d found online, $6 US instead of $5 US. If the rate is within reason, we’ll usually agree and go on which is what we did in this case.
The man motioned for us to follow him. As we followed him outside the station, we passed several other taxi cab drivers who were razzing our guy…Of course, we didn’t have any idea what they were saying, but based upon their tone and the back and forth bantering and laughing, it was clearly all in fun. Our driver said something back to them and as we walked past each of them they all said “wow”, “wow”, “wow” and laughed. We both got slightly worried, but figured what the heck the guy has a car and we needed a ride. Oh well, we’re still laughing about it and he did get us to our accommodation safe and sound. We both think the guy was out there to make a little cash (his car was definitely not a taxi) and the regular taxi drivers probably told him he’d never get anyone to ride with him…But, here we were the perfect customers for him 🙂
Tam Coc was a funky, quaint and beautiful little town. Our accommodation was very unique and was in a beautiful Ancient Vietnamese Village which sat right below two very large limestone karsts. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous everywhere you looked, and Tam Coc has been referred to as the Ha Long bay on land. The weather was less then stellar during our visit, but we were still able to get out and see the gorgeous surroundings. Tam Coc is definitely a place worth a visit as the scenery is stunning and like no other.
See video and photos below highlighting our days in Tam Coc, Vietnam. To see all images of this location click the link at the bottom of this post or go to our gallery.
