We had been warned about Tam Coc — that it was touristy, overrun, a postcard that had eaten itself. We went anyway, because Lia had seen a photograph taken at dawn that looked nothing like a postcard. It looked like the world before anyone had thought to name it.
The Boats
You hire a rower at the Bến Thuyền dock, just south of Ninh Binh town on the Ngô Đồng River, and within minutes the road disappears. The rower — an older woman the morning we went, wearing a conical nón lá hat pulled low — used her feet on the oars, both hands braced against the gunwales, an economy of motion I have not seen replicated anywhere. The limestone karsts rise out of the paddies on either side, vertical and absolute, covered in hanging ferns and a kind of dark moss that makes the stone look wet even in dry weather. The rice in early summer is the specific green of something not yet committed to being anything. It has not decided to be rice yet. It is still light.
The three cave passages — Hang Ca, Hang Hai, Hang Ba — arrive without warning. You are in open air, then you are in stone dark, the ceiling maybe two meters above your head, the sound of the boat changing entirely. A drip somewhere. Bats. The smell of cold mineral water and something older, composted, subterranean. Then light again, and another valley you had no idea was waiting.
What Nobody Tells You About the Route
The surprise came on the return leg. A water buffalo had waded into the river, chest-deep, about two hundred meters ahead of us. The rower stopped paddling and we simply drifted, watching it. It was not doing anything. It was standing in the river with the patience of stone, and the karsts stood behind it in the same patience, and I had the disorienting sense that we were the only things in this landscape that moved, that hurried, that needed to be somewhere else.
Lia put her hand over the side of the boat and let the river run through her fingers. Neither of us spoke.
Eating in Ninh Binh
Back in town, on Hoàng Hoa Thám street near the old quarter, we ate cơm cháy — crispy scorched rice served with goat meat in a clay pot, a dish specific to this province the way carbonara is specific to Rome. The rice shatters when you press it. The goat is braised long, with lemongrass and shrimp paste, and the whole thing arrives still spitting from the pot. It tastes like the valley would taste if the valley were food.
When to go: April through June offers the best rice scenery — the paddies are flooded and intensely green before the late-summer harvest. Avoid weekends if possible; the boats are calmer on a Tuesday.