18 & 19.03 Days 63 & 64 Trang An
Monday 18th & Tuesday 19th March - Trang An (Days 63 & 64)
Monday
After wading through various options for a cruise near Halong Bay we’re set for Saturday 23rd. We opt then to extend our stay in Trang An for two more nights before going to Hanoi for a few nights before the cruise. We’d have to change rooms is we want to stay at The View Point and as there are more homestays within 50 metres, Sienna and I yesterday had walked into a couple to have a look, and so today we’re moving to Trang An Village Homestay, not to be confused with Trang An Family Homestay that is across the alleyway.
It’s wet again, which only serves to encourage schoolwork in the morning before rolling around the corner into our next room - which doesn’t have the views of the last place but is otherwise very similar.
I quite like the small village of Trang An, conveniently located between the main two local sites, with a few restaurants and shops, but it’s missing a bakery or Banh Mi stand for our liking.
Lunch is back at Riverside cafe where we’d eaten on the first morning for generous portions overlooking the river - where we spot our third kingfisher in the last few days.
More rain precipitates more schoolwork and I take Sienna back to The ViewPoint for a coffee - it’s one of the passions of Jake the owner. When he sees me he says we should have told him where we were going - turns out his wife is cousins of our new homestay owner.
By dinnertime the drizzle is heavy enough to make us not want to leave the homestay, so we have food in their outdoor covered seating area between the pool on one side and fish pond on the other. More card games and done.
Tuesday
I feel like I’ve written the words mist and drizzle a lot for the last few days. On not one occasion have either of our phones said it was or will rain. Today is different; it’s rain on the phone forecast and definitely rain in real life. We even don our ponchos for the 5 metre slippery walk to breakfast after somewhat of a lay in (good black out curtains, no traffic, no cockerels will do that).
Thankfully breakfast has been included both here at Trang An Village and at The ViewPoint so we haven’t had to venture out in the wet to start the day. Because once something gets wet, it stays wet - the dampness in the air lets nothing dry.
The kids plough through their schoolwork, Sienna smoothly solo, whilst Seb needs someone next to him the whole time to keep him on the straight and narrow.
For lunch, and for the afternoon’s activity we’ve decided to go to the mall in Ninh Binh. We’re not talking about an American mall; it’s two levels with a supermarket upstairs, a couple of eateries down, lots of those “grabber” toy games downstairs and a cinema where we know Kung Fu Panda is showing. Remarkably half their showings are in English but with Vietnamese subtitles, whilst the other half are dubbed. We hadn’t realised this would be the case and had steeled ourselves for the dubbed version. But it does mean we have 3.5 hrs to kill before the subtitled showing.
Some fried chicken and a tour of the supermarket shaves off an hour. But thankfully they also have a kids play area, slightly smaller than the one we used in Hue, but we lark about in there.
In the cinema Kate is disappointed not to have reclining seats, but we do have our choice of seats. All of them. We are the only people wanting to watch Kung Fu Panda 4 in English in Ninh Binh on a wet Tuesday afternoon.
The clock in the taxi is an hour fast on the return journey but with the rain and the dark the kids are happy to go to bed, so we just hold onto that little white lie, and have a drink outside by the pool as they drift off to sleep.