We arrived in Vietnam late Saturday night and spent one night at a perfectly fine hotel about 10 minutes from the airport. We ventured out to try and find some breakfast on Sunday morning and quickly got overwhelmed. Something I wasn’t really expecting considering how much we have travelled the last few months. But every “cafe” we spotted was dark, felt a bit dirty and had indecipherable items on the menu. We ended up finding a mini-mart so it was cookies, chips and packaged bread for “breakfast”. We sat by the rooftop pool at our hotel and had a good laugh.

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Side note: I didn’t do as much research about our destinations in Vietnam because about six weeks ago, I changed our itinerary completely. The area we were originally headed to would have still been in the height of the rainy season, and we didn’t really want to deal with that if we didn’t have to. I found out that northern Vietnam (Hanoi, Ha Long Bay, etc) should be drier than the southern part where we were originally headed (Hoi An) so cancelled our hotels and rebooked everything. We are so lucky we changed our plans because the town we were going to stay in for two weeks experienced severe flooding from Sunday-Tuesday!

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On Sunday we drove 3 hours southeast to our current location. We have been here for five days now, and I still don’t know if “Ninh Binh” (where we are) is a town or a county or a general region, but here we are. LOL And we are loving it. We are staying at a small homestay, tucked between the rice fields, limestone mountains and small villages with cute restaurants.

Our homestay has bikes we can use, which we have really been enjoying. After we settled into our rooms, we hopped on and headed about 10 minutes down the road to a street filled with tourist-friendly restaurants. We found some delicious pizza and walked around a bit. I thought that at that point everyone was happy and full but I misjudged the situation. So after another bike ride through the area, the rest of the family went back to the hotel to relax and I biked around a bit more to cool off. Travel life (and life in general) isn’t always all sunshine and adventure. More about that later….

On Monday, we took it slow. Schoolwork and Steffen’s work in the morning, relaxation in the afternoon and then back to the same pizza place for dinner. In between, lots of snuggles with the kitten at the homestay.

I’ve said it before on here, but I’ll say it again, long-term travel necessitates days of rest. Long-term travel with four children, even more so. But I have a hard time just sitting still when we are somewhere new. I’m itching to explore. So I went out for a run that afternoon which was a great choice on many levels. I came across this little lake with a bunch of boats, so we had our plans for the next day settled.

On Tuesday, we decided to start the day out with the boat trip and then do schoolwork in the afternoon because of Steffen’s work schedule. We biked to the boat departure point and got on two boats to tour Tam Coc, three caves known as Hang Cả, Hang Hai, and Hang Ba as well as a temple and viewpoint. The hike up to the viewpoint consisted of many, many steep stairs through a narrow gorge but the views made it well with it. The whole area is gorgeous! Also, interestingly, the (mostly) women who were rowing the boats used their feet! I wonder if that is better for their backs….

On Wednesday, we went on another boat trip. This time we biked to the Trang An area and took a tour that passed through nine caves (some very low!) and saw three temples. There were four of us in one boat and then the other two shared a boat with two very kind Brits who gave us a few recommendations for our upcoming stay in Hanoi. It was another lovely experience!

In afternoon we did our schoolwork/work, and then took things easy on Thursday. Something we have all loved about Southeast Asia is the affordable and ample number of spas offering massages, facials, hair treatments, pedicures, etc. We have taken advantage of them in Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and now Vietnam. On Thursday afternoon, Charlotte, Olivia and Steffen went to a small spa in town for some relaxation. Something we will all miss when we leave the region!

As promised, a bit of a reflection about our three months on the road. In my last post I highlighted all of our favorite parts and there have been so many wonderful experiences we have shared. But it is not always easy. We had a heart to heart over dinner a few days ago and some things that are universally difficult is the lack of privacy (no one has their own space ever), missing friends and family, and missing the community we had at school and through sports. All understandable and anticipated and something that we were willing to give up in exchange for the experiences we are having.

But I had the feeling that there was something else below the surface, and Charlotte said it well. She said, individually, she loved visiting all the counties we’ve been to; if we had taken a two-week trip to Sri Lanka (for example) and headed back to Germany afterwards, she would have only had positive memories. But since we are going from place to place and they are all so different from Europe, it’s getting hard. Tiring. Constantly having to adjust to a new culture, new food, new accommodations, new time zones. In 14 weeks we have been to seven countries and stayed in 18 different accommodations which is a lot of adjusting! We will be slowing down a bit, but not until December. We will spend six weeks in New Zealand (which also won’t be such a cultural shock) and then around 10-12 weeks in Australia. We are all looking forward to that chapter of the trip, but also very excited for our upcoming four weeks in Japan. And despite the challenges, we are still glad to be on this adventure together!