A Chill Day In Tam Cốc

Yes, I did have to copy-paste that last word. My phone refused to believe that you could put that number of modifiers on one letter.

Biggest discovery of today is that I’ve probably been drinking Vietnamese Condensed Milk Coffee wrong. That white layer at the bottom is the condensed milk, & if you stir it up, the flavour changes; First time I’d seen it in a glass, so I had no idea.

Had hostel breakfast of the now familiar baguette & eggs.

I spent some time just chilling outside my room, reading & relaxing for a while. The Cambodian eVisa came through, which is good, though I might have to amend the exit port because I’m probably going to fly out, not take the bus. There’s a link in the email they sent for changing things, though they only mention arrival stuff as things to change, so maybe they don’t care as much? I’ll check tomorrow; I want a day off today.

I eventually left the premises, though I did put some laundry in first, as I was down to one shirt.

Wandered further up the lane, to find that it ran out of houses/homestay & became a raised road through fields, with the weird-looking limestone mountains punching straight up in the distance.

Walked the other way, into Tam Coc town, where I’d seen a lake from the bus on the way through. There’s a big tourist something there, though it took me a while to find out what; The boats are for a tour of three caves, and you get rowed through them by someone using their feet on the oars.

Different techniques for the return stroke it seems; Grab with your toes, use the arch of the foot to grip, or use the side of the ball of your foot.

Walked around the lake as much as I could, along mostly empty roads with the occasional abandoned something in the woods.

On the other side of the little bridge the paths turn into this warren of alleyways; There are homestays & other accommodation down then, as well as what are presumably regular houses. I’m glad I’m not staying at one, even though they look nice, because trying to find one of those places in the dark after a long day and lugging all of your gear would be a nightmare.

Stopped for lunch at a little riverside cafe so that I could sit and watch the boats being rowed past. It was very pleasant, and it was a nice lunch.

I did crumble in my resolve and order a banana pancake, like some sort of horrible backpacking type, which … I guess I am. Honestly, the rest of the lunch was better, but maybe I’m just not a banana pancake person. I saw a Nutella Banh Mi mentioned at one place on Cat Ba, and thought it sounded awful.

Wandered further through town, until it got to the point where there was more and more concrete and less and less interesting stuff to see, at which point I turned back.

Followed another road near the lake which fairly quickly turned into another nature area, which was nice to see. Did get passed by a flotilla of people on bicycles at one point, which makes me wonder whether they were on some kind of bicycle tour.

Back at the home stay I sat outside and read for a while; The laundry that I had put in was delivered while I sat there, which means they had done it in a few hours. The hostel before the previous hostel offered a 24-hour and an express laundry service, but I’m not honestly sure whether this place uses a laundry service or just has its own machines; Maybe it’s a small enough town that there really isn’t a big laundry backlog, and so everything just kind of becomes an express service?

Weirdly, I started to notice that I was getting cold. T-shirt and shorts were not doing the job, and so for the first time since I left Auckland I had to change into jeans, and dig out my lightweight warm long sleeved thing. Wasn’t expecting that in Vietnam.

Finished the day sitting in the ‘restaurant’ area & doing some paper journal stuff. Because it’s a family operation, at one point the family sat down for their evening meal, which was unexpected; I’d assumed that they’d want to hide from the guests, but maybe that says more about me than about them.