Trading mountains for the miraculous.

Recharged in Sa Pa, it was time for Divina to move us south. This week, we tackle the overnight train to Ninh Bình, and it was exactly the kind of travel irony we’ve come to expect. We paid for the comfort of a luxury sleeping car, only to receive the complementary, very unwelcome extras of incredibly loud rattling and seismic bumps all night long.

The journey was rough, but the destination was pure hypnosis. Arriving in Ninh Bình, we were immediately calmed by a landscape unlike any other in Vietnam. We explore the serene waterways filled with slow-moving rowing boats, the towering limestone cliffs that seem to rise straight out of the rice fields, and the beautiful, quiet power of the ancient temples we ...