IDYLLIC: A panoramic view from the gate of Lotus Field Homestay in Ninh Bình. VNS Photos Mỹ Hà

by Nguyễn Mỹ Hà

Ninh Bình has always been a gem on the way from Hà Nội heading south. It's picturesque, and you don't have to try too hard to get there. The province boasts beautiful mountain ranges with winding lazy rivers where rice fields nestle by lotuses on rugged marshland.

It takes only three hours by car from Hà Nội, making it easy to reach by lunch.

Ninh Bình is affordable, the views are breathtaking, the people are kind, and the food tastes great. As it is summer, and still not too late to catch the rice harvesting season, we decided to book at the Lotus Field Homestay.

The homestay has several bungalows with red tile roofs, standing by the foot of the mountain. Built on concrete stilts, the bungalows are located in the middle of a rice field, where you can contemplate the pretty fields while breathing in the rice fragrance.

The rooms are large and host two king-size beds in one room. Our companion also likes fishing and Lotus Field has its own natural pond you can fish from. They even provide fishing rods and bait.

COUNTRY SUPPER: The patio in the evening could be a great dining place, say, for a small wedding reception.

The homestay largely hosts foreign guests, so kept greeting us in English, and we kept replying in Vietnamese.

While staying there, we met quite the international entourage: a man from near Cologne in Germany; a big family from Australia with grandparents, parents and a child, with the child's mother being Vietnamese; a family of five from France; another family from Singapore; and a guy from South Korea. It was like a mini United Nations.

A typical schedule for those visiting Ninh Bình is to take a bicycle or motorbike and take off after breakfast, spend the whole day visiting landscapes, have lunch at a popular goat meat restaurant, and then head back in the evening.

But that was not tempting enough to lure us out of the homestay. We had actually agreed that we would not go sightseeing anywhere because it'd be too crowded, too hot and tiring.

My travel companion and darling daughter said that she only wanted to stay in, as she was too tired after a long and stressful end to secondary school exams.

My other companion brought his fishing tools, including specially ordered bait, to keep him busy morning and afternoon for three days, so he wouldn't move an inch from his fishing spot.

TIME TO FEAST: The healthy dinner we had, with minced pork omelette, boiled morning glory, and fried carp in tomato sauce, freshly caught in the afternoon.

But I cannot sit still. The field was half harvested. The rice left was gold and the grass green. But since the homestay changed ownership a few years back, the new owner doesn't grow rice around the bungalows any more. From afar, it looked just like uncut rice, but as we got closer, it turned out to be wild grass. The canal on the left was full of rafts of white ducks that roamed the fields looking for dropped rice grains, quacking their lungs to break the country silence.

Ninh Bình is not only famed for its rice fields, though in recent years is noted for its lotus. Different lotus species from Japan have been planted, and the lotus fields are vast and wrap around the tiny local roads.

You can ride your bicycle in and out of country lanes, among secret homestays standing on stilts on the water, or watch people fishing along the canals. It's the rural charms of books and movies, a pastoral idyll, serene, beautiful, and where nothing ever seems to go wrong.

Breakfast was simple yet delicious with a hot soup with fresh vermicelli with either rice field crab roe, or meat balls. One of the ladies in the kitchen, I was told, has had a food stall selling crab vermicelli for 15 years. You can also order eggs: soft-boiled, scrambled, as an omelette or sunny side up.

There is also toast, butter and jam for breakfast. The chef made wonderful banana pancakes, which delighted many other guests staying here.

For lunch, we ordered a simple duck cooked with bamboo shoots (VNĐ380,000) to have with fresh rice noodles. It must have been the fattest duck ever for this time of year, and there was meat too much for us to finish. The soup was absolutely delicious, so we kept half of it back to have with dinner.

Over three days, we tried almost a dozen dishes on the menu, most of them good. There was boiled morning glory (VNĐ45,000), minced pork omelette (VNĐ 55,000), Vietnamese beef steak (VNĐ90,000), stir-fried goat (VNĐ200,000), fried tofu in tomato sauce (VNĐ50,000), fried stuffed tofu (VNĐ60,000), sour pork rib soup (VNĐ200,000) and sour fish soup (VNĐ80,000) to name but a few.

Last but not least, our resident fisherman caught a few carp in the pond, which we gave to the chef and he cooked up a beautiful sour soup, for a small service charge, of course. The next day, he caught even more, but we kept only two to sauté in tomato sauce, giving the rest to the kitchen to enjoy.

The Singaporean family also joined us in our fishing game. Their daughter was given a rod with a caught fish to simply reel in, but it escaped and left her a dash upset. The mother was soon asking where we bought our bait, and we wished them better luck next time.

When we got home on Sunday, on TV we saw hordes of people stuck at the lotus pond by Hang Múa (Dance Cave), which was only two kilometres away from where we were. We sighed in relief, as it was sheer luck we didn't get caught there, or stranded waiting for a boat to get to the islands of Cô Tô or Quan Lạn off the Quảng Ninh coast. VNS

Lotus Field Homestay, Ninh Bình

Khê Thượng Hamlet , Hoa Lư District, Ninh Bình Province 430000

Tel: 098 356 3066

Comment: Vast views of the valley and mountains with rice paddies and lotus pond intertwined