Tet Party

02/09/2024

At breakfast at 10 a.m. we met 2 nice girls from Germany. We started talking to both of them and talked about our rooms and our future plans. We now feel slightly guilty because we don't do the Ha Gian Loop that everyone recommends. It is a multi-day motorcycle tour on a very famous route in Vietnam. You can either do this alone or ride on the back of an “Easyrider”. We actually just don't really care about it and it's too dangerous. Therefore our paths continue differently.

We didn't know how or if we would get out of Ninh Binh in the next few days. Our landlord took away all hope and informed us that possible train and bus connections had been fully booked for days and weeks. But since we definitely want/need to travel further (and not just in 4 days!), we did some research on various sites on the Internet ourselves. We found out that there are still seats available on the train to Hue (our next stop) for both today and tomorrow. We didn't book because we were warned that there were a lot of online booking scams going around. When we met our host again, he asked us about our plans. He showed us all the fully booked trains for the next few days, but for whatever reason he skipped tomorrow. Nina persisted and asked him to show us tomorrow. He checked tomorrow and was amazed to see many free train seats. The prices were very high but it didn't matter to us because we have to and want to go further south to get our flights on Thursday. It worked, we were able to book. He took over phone calls and bookings for us.

We left the field, relieved that we knew what was going to happen next. We decided to have lunch again because it was already 2 p.m. The spicy chickpea curry tasted good and warmed us from the inside. Afterwards we drove to another temple, explored the complex a bit and rode back on the scooter, stopping in town again for coffee, waffles and cash withdrawal before heading back to the accommodation. We were really the fiercest stylers on the scooter and just had to laugh.

“Young Nina! Why are you driving a kamikaze?!!”

OK. Laundry. At first we were really relieved that our laundry was done when we got back to the accommodation. The fact that it was folded and just came straight out of the dryer didn't bother us much. However, when Nina folded the laundry, she noticed that the laundry wasn't clean. This particularly affects our underbushes and socks. Age! We paid for it and unfortunately have to go to a new laundry service again the day after tomorrow at the latest. We may now see a connection to our “clean” bed linen.

By the way, we won't change our room, it would have been too much effort. So we were kind enough to just stay in our room. Actually, 4 people (a family) were supposed to stay here from today. We don't know where they are. Sometimes we are not entirely sure how honest our host is - even if he is really friendly.

In the evening, we and all other guests were invited to dinner with the host family to celebrate the Tet festival. We sat around the table in a large group and shared the food provided by the family. We chatted with a few other travelers, but said goodbye early because we were really tired and not in the mood to party. Now we've written the blog and are ready for another episode before we go to sleep.

Tomorrow will be a long day of travel... we wish you a nice weekend, relax.

Ronja & Nina