I am writing to you from the top of what's sort of a mountain. Possibly a foothill. My brother informed me that the landscape of limestone rock formations that I'm in is called a karst. The exact etymology and pronunciation of this word is something you'll have to consult either my brother or Wikipedia for (which might amount to the same thing).
I am writing offline because my phone battery is low, and I prefer to have it alive as I return to the hotel. The cell coverage, even here, over 100 meters up, is excellent. Had I thought to bring a cord to charge my phone via my laptop, I could probably stay up here, online, for four hours or so.
Anyway, I should continue with the good parts of this adventure. I woke up this morning before the roosters, which was actually surprisingly close to 4:00 AM. I didn't have a good reason to get up that early, as Anna's serves breakfast at 7 AM. I worked on a few photos, browsed the web a little, and watched some travel videos on YouTube until breakfast time.
Oops. I just realized my camera was shooting in RAW for the last several minutes; I'm at the top of this mountain thing, writing on my laptop, set up my camera to do a timelapse, and I forget to switch to JPG.
Derp.
To explain for anyone who doesn't completely understand, a RAW image file gives you every single byte of data the sensor outputs; when a camera produces a RAW file, it produces a file size significantly larger than that of a normal JPG. No matter. I'll just stay up here another hour or so. There's virtually nobody up here, I could almost sleep up here if I wanted to.
Back to this morning. Breakfast time comes around, I go downstairs to eat, and while I can't quite remember all the options, I do remember what I got quite well. I asked for a banana pancake, or a pancake with bananas, or something of that sort.
I definitely got a banana pancake.
There was little need for sugar or syrup. The bread part of the pancake was good, but tasted different than a flour or sourdough pancake back home. It's not necessarily an unpleasant taste, but unfamiliar; different. The pancake was fried on both sides, as pancakes usually are, and on one side were inlaid fresh banana slices, fried onto the pancake. This was delicious. Anna proceeded to bring me a few slices of orange, banana, and what my untrained tongue best judged to be mango. These seemed fresh and ripe, and were sweet and delicious. I also had an orange juice, as usual, which was fresh-squeezed and sweet.
Breakfast was good. Perhaps tomorrow I'll have two items instead of one.
After breakfast, I wanted to get myself a bike, as the walk to Hang Mua (which means "Dancing Cave," as evidenced by the sign below) was over an hour long. An hour's walk is what I did yesterday to get from Ninh Binh to here; it wouldn't be impossible, and I'd be carrying less luggage, but I kind of need a bike to get around anyway. I initially asked Anna Tham if I could use one of hers, and she said it would be 50,000 dong per day (This is a little under $2.50, reasonable, but not the best price I've heard of). I told her I'd like to see the bikes in Tam Coc first, to make sure I was getting the best bike and best price I could. She promptly offered to let me borrow her bike to do so, for free.
I was surprised by her willingness to let me use it like that, but Vietnam is a different place than America; it's considered bad practice to use one persons's service or a product in order to determine if someone else's service or product is better. Anna doesn't seem to think this way, so off I went.
I biked to Tam Coc, where I originally saw a large selection of bikes. Having found this small army of bikes again, the salesman quickly appeared (it's almost impossible to spend a minute looking at product in Vietnam without the owner coming by and encouraging you to buy it). His price was 100,000 dong per day to rent it, and $250 to buy. The bikes seemed like a combination of road bikes and mountain bikes, which was weird. They had long, curved mud guards and a rack on the back (like a road bike), but also front shocks and handles like a mountain bike. I'm not sure which the tires looked more like.
The condition of the bikes could charitably be called good; they were doubtless all in working order (at the time of sale), but some had the water bottle holster broken, some had part of the handlebar rubber missing...they were thoroughly used bikes. I can't be positive that the bikes weren't some sort of tough, well-built bike that would last months without the need for repairs...but I chose against them in the end (allegedly you can buy a motorcycle in usable condition in Vietnam for $250, so I certainly wasn't buying a bicycle for that price).
Another detail of that exchange; the salesman, who was quite friendly even after I first said I'd buy one and then said I wouldn't, asked for my passport to take down my details. I have no fear he would have given it back, but I don't yet understand the significance of this; the clearest reason I can imagine for this is that the business could deny service and products to someone who didn't pay the first time, but I guess another possibility is that the business owner could relay the passport number to the government, who might detain you at the border or airport.
I'm just guessing; there's probably a pretty straightforward and simple reason for this.
Anyway, I went back to Anna Tham Hotel View, and told her I'd definitely be using her bike instead, as it was better suited to my needs, was in better condition (sort of), and was half the price of those in Tam Coc. She also already has my passport details, so I was basically free to use it. I'll be paying for it when I leave, but she's friendly enough about it that I felt like I wasn't.
I gathered my things from my room, initially a pretty light load, water, my camera, and a few other things; eventually, I added my laptop, speaker, and some energy bars. These I stowed in my drawstring backpack, and out I went.
I just realized I haven't ridden a bike in a long time; maybe more than a year. This is because my bicycle's stem broke sometime a year or so ago, and I couldn't decide whether to fix it or buy a new bike. Thankfully, I'm here in Vietnam, and not at home, indecisive.
I mounted and went; it wasn't an issue, having been off the saddle for so long. I guess that's why they say this thing or that thing is like riding a bike. It really does stay with you. Or at least it stays with me.
Biking to Hang Mua was interesting; initially it was simply asphalt; not the best roads in the world, small holes and bumps here and there, but then I got onto the paths between rice paddies, usually only traversed by farmers on bicycles and motorbikes. These paths were between two and ten feet wide, and were uneven and bumpy throughout.
I went several kilometers on these paths, which varied and changed as I went; some were wide enough for cars to pass on, others were barely wide enough for my bike. I considered for a minute or so what I would do if I fell in the paddies.
I had to keep my butt off the seat most of the time, or else it would have been beaten raw by the seat, and worse when I got back to the hotel. My arms and legs compensated for the shock as the bike beneath me felt the earth's uneven harshness. I revel somewhat in the mechanics of this system of appendages and machine, working together to keep head level. These sort of mechanics of the world sometimes pique my interest and fondness like that.
I went a bit too far down one path, which turned from gravelly path to weedy path, and finally to no path at all. This was where the farmers would probably go to reach the far sides of the paddies; the mountain was directly in front of me, approaching what I thought was a turn, but after a few feet I realized that the bike would do me no good down this path. I backtracked a few hundred feet and took the right path.
As I biked through the fields, my orange shirt (and otherwise very traveller-ish apparel) attracted attention. Occasionally one of the famers, knee- or thigh-deep in mud, would look up, smile, and loudly cry, "Hello!" Their accents and attitudes kept my spirits high. I stopped once or twice, and the natives tried to talk, either to me unsuccessfully, or to each other, successfully. They seemed to think I was funny. I don't really see a problem with my oddity, presence or folly bringing laughter to the rice paddies here in Vietnam.
I arrived at the Hang Mua Ecolodge Resort near Hang Mua; I had hoped that the resort wouldn't charge me to climb to the top, unassisted and unaccompanied, but I think my 53,000 dong were well-spent. I walked into a rather lovely area, covered with trees, some close to bonsai size, others full-size; some willows, I believe, and a pond, as well. I approached the stairs and chose to take a photo of the dragon handrail, which I did in HDR; hopefully the results of this experiment are worthwhile.
Regardless, one of the workers nearby came and watched over my shoulder as I set up and waited as my camera took the three separate shots of the dragon, and I showed him the finished three, saying, "Three into one, one better." Something like that; HDR (high dynamic range) photography merges three separate shots into one in order to achieve a better photo than any one of the originals. He may or may not have understood that.
I began climbing the stairs to the top, of which I think there are between 450 and 500. I've heard it both ways. Some of the stairs are sort of intermediary, as some steps are rather tall, which may explain the differing accounts. It was at this point, somewhere near one hundred steps in, that I realized I'd left my water bottle on my bike. No matter; I am a camel. Worst case scenario someone steals it. Best case scenario...they don't, I guess.
I continued climbing and occasionally taking shots from the incrementally better viewpoints. The haze is still quite pronounced, so I probably can't see more than a mile or two, but it's still beautiful. One of the weather forecasts I saw today suggested that the sun would be out early in the morning on T...just a second...on Thursday. Hopefully the sun will come out on Thursday morning.
So I just heard some goats meandering up toward the shrine up here, and somewhat worried for my camera, I hurried up there to make sure they didn't so much as touch my time lapse machine of doom. I was a bit worried they'd charge me or something, but they were quite docile and just ate some greens near the shrine for a minute or two before making their way down the mountainside.
Back to climbing the stairs. The stairs are in some places covered with dung, and in others scattered with colorful leaves or petals; in still other places, there are both together. How very poetic and symbolic of you, Hang Mua. I appreciate the irony in your dung- and petal-scattered staircase.
The stairs wound around the limestone, uneven and rough. I wound in a similar pattern up the mountain, because the limestone is kind of pointy and I'm kind of soft. Also, I'm not much of a climber with a camera around my neck.
I arrived at the top probably twenty or thirty minutes later, tired but somewhat exhilerated; the views along the way were continually more expansive and beautiful. At the top there's a shrine, as I've mentioned, and a dragon similar to the one on the bottom of the stairs. This one, though, is probably between twenty and thirty feet long. There are two other structures on nearby peaks, which I think are smallish pagodas.
I set up my camera for a time lapse, started writing, and now here we are, above the Dancing Cave, in Ninh Binh, Vietnam.
There was a time when I wondered if I would even be able to get on the plane, or if the it would land safely, or if I would get through customs without getting arrested or shot. I worried about what I packed and what I could get here, the dangers of being in Vietnam...the hard details, the things you probably should know beforehand.
With the exception of a couple photos on Reddit, though, I had very little perspective on the beauty and wonder of this place; the photos of Tam Coc and of Ha Long Bay that everyone sees on the internet are lovely, and doubtless representative of what you'd see during a clear summer day, but the solitude and silence, the stillness and restfulness of this place...that, you cannot put into a photo.
From very high up,
!Noah!
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