The guide gave these out on the bus home, somewhere past Phu Ly, when it was dark and everyone had gone quiet. I filled in about half, fell asleep against the window, and found it in my bag back at the hotel. Sorry, Tuan.

So I have finished it off here instead, with the bits that would never have fitted in the little boxes.

For context: I am 55, Ruth is 58, neither of us had been to Vietnam before, and we had four days in Hanoi. Every single person we spoke to said go to Ninh Binh. So we went. It is a very long day. I would do it again tomorrow.

Here is the one thing I would tell somebody going this month. They messaged us the evening before to say the bus could not collect us at the hotel door, because from the first of July the tourist coaches are not allowed into the Old Quarter streets any more. Apparently. So we walked five minutes out to a meeting point on Trang Tien with our sun hats on at twenty past seven in the morning, feeling slightly abandoned, and then the minibus turned up exactly when they said it would and it was completely fine.

It is two hours down. There were sixteen of us. Wifi on the bus, one bottle of water each — hold that thought, one is not enough — and a stop halfway at an enormous place with clean toilets and a shop selling embroidered tablecloths, which I walked round twice and bought nothing, and then bought one anyway later, on a boat, in the middle of a river. I will come back to that.

Our guide was Tuan. He talked for most of the two hours and I did not mind once.

You get into a little metal boat at the harbour at about ten, two of you and one rower, and she pushes off and then lies back slightly and rows with her legs. Her feet on the oars. Tuan said they all do it because rowing by hand for eight hours wrecks your back, and your legs are stronger anyway, which when you hear it out loud is obviously correct and still looks like a magic trick for the first twenty minutes.

Tam Coc means three caves and that is exactly what you get. The first one, Hang Ca, is the long one and you go quite quiet in the middle of it because it is cold and dripping and the ceiling comes down close enough that everybody ducks even when they do not need to. Then two more, then the boats turn round and come back.

Early July is the tail end of the yellow rice. Half the fields were already cut and stubbly and half were still standing and gold, and honestly the half-and-half was lovely — I do not think I minded missing the full postcard.

Two warnings. There is no shade at all on that boat and the water throws the sun straight back up at you; wear the hat, put the cream on before you get in, not after, like I did. And at the turnaround another boat slides up alongside with cold drinks and tablecloths and you buy something. Everyone buys something. I have made peace with it. Take cash, small notes, and tip your rower properly — she has just rowed you up a river with her feet.

Straight off the boat they put you on bicycles for half an hour round the villages, which at half past eleven in July I was not sure about, and then it turned out to be one of my favourite parts of the day. Flat as a pancake. Ducks. Somebody’s washing. A dog that took against Ruth specifically. Her chain came off after about four minutes and a man came out of his house, put it back on in roughly eight seconds without looking at it, and walked off before we could give him anything.

Then lunch at a local place in Tam Coc, a buffet, and it was fine — rice, spring rolls, morning glory, tofu, some fried fish. Not the best meal of our trip, not trying to be. It is included; the drinks are not, which caught us out, so bring a bit of cash for that too. I had two lemonades and no regrets.

One o’clock, Hoa Lu. This was the capital of Vietnam in the tenth century, which I did not know, and there are two temples on the old palace ground, one for the Dinh king and one for the Le king. It is shaded and old and calm and there are almost no steps, which after the boat and before what was coming was very well judged of somebody. Tuan told us a long story about the Dinh king and a boy and some reeds and I have already lost the details, which is my fault and not his.

And then quarter past two, Mua Cave, and the 500 steps. Nobody undersells this and they are right not to. It is stone steps up the side of a hill in July and you go up them slowly with your heart going and everyone stops halfway and pretends to admire the view, which is fine, because the view genuinely is the point. I got to somewhere around four hundred, found a step in the shade, and sat on it very happily. Ruth went all the way up to the dragon on the ridge and took the photograph and came down pink and triumphant and has mentioned it since.

Go up slowly. Take more water than they give you — one bottle on the bus is not two hours of boat plus a hill.

Door to door it was twelve hours — out of the hotel at twenty past seven, back in the Old Quarter just before seven in the evening, and we ate crisps for dinner because neither of us could face sitting upright in a restaurant. It came to a bit over a million dong each with the VAT, plus cash for the drinks, the tablecloth I did not need, and tips for Tuan and the driver, which are not included and which you should budget for properly rather than scrabbling about at the end like we did.

We booked ours through TGROUP, who had already sorted our car from the airport, so I let them do this one too. If you are going, the thing worth saying to them is that you want the Tam Coc boat, not Trang An. Both are lovely by all accounts and people argue about it endlessly, but Tam Coc is the one with the rice fields and the lady rowing with her feet, and that is the bit Ruth still talks about, and Ruth has been to a lot of places.

The other thing worth saying to them is how old your knees are. Ours were 55 and 58 and the day was still a yes.

— Margaret. Form finally handed in, three weeks late, to nobody.