Day 24
Country
After breakfast we walked to another pagoda which was a good couple of miles away. On the way, as we were walking through the back streets of Tam Coc, a couple of gentlemen who were sitting outside their house called us over to join them and have a cup of tea and a chat. Such friendly people. Can you imagine Mr. Jones down the road doing that to a strange foreigner?
After the pagoda we went on a boat trip which cost 200000 VND ($10) for both of us. The boat took us around the local waterways among rice fields into a couple of caves and back again. It took about an hour and half and the oarsman rowed the boat the entire way with his feet!! At the turn around point we were swamped by floating shops all trying to sell us something.
Back at the Homestay we got on our bikes and went exploring the area. We saw some gruesome sights - people were selling goats which were skinned and roasted whole (apparently this area is famous for its goats). Head, hooves, horns and eyes were all intact. It was horrible but you couldn't help but stare at them. On one particular road near Trang An, there were loads of stalls along the road all selling this.
A bit further on we stopped at a view point where some locals from a wedding party wanted to sit on our bikes with their girl friends and have their photos taken.
We wanted to see the floating village we had heard about from the landlady at the Homestay. After crossing a toll bridge we found the floating village which was basically a whole load of disused barges whose wheel houses were being used to live in by people. There were so many of them that we found it hard to believe any of them, except for maybe the ones right at the back, would ever move from there.
In the evening, two Vietnamese guys who were also staying at the homestay, were playing pool and I got chatting to them trying to find out what game they were playing. After a while they invited us to have dinner with them. So the four of us walked to a local restaurant where they took it upon themselves to order a whole lot of food without asking us what we wanted. In a way it was great because we wouldn't otherwise have ordered things that they did and would've therefore missed out on them. For example there was this make-yourself spring roll type thing which was absolutely delicious. It wasn't deep fried but made fresh at the table with all the ingredients. There was rice paper, fresh salad, soy sauce, chilli sauce and so many other things I can't even remember which we wouldn't have had a clue what to do with. But my man Trùc Trang took care of it it all while Vinh Dùong kept the landlord and waiters busy. Even the chef came out and joined us for a bit. It turned out to be a fab evening and despite the language barrier we all had a great time and laughed a lot. Can't remember any of the conversation though.
