Ninh Binh

This corner of the delta was inhabited long before the Vietnamese state existed: caves in the limestone around Tràng An have yielded evidence of human occupation stretching back tens of thousands of years, one of the reasons the area was listed by UNESCO for its culture as well as its landscape. The defensive value of the karst is the thread running through everything that followed.

In 968 Đinh Bộ Lĩnh, having defeated the warlords who divided the country after the end of Chinese rule, declared himself emperor and built his capital at Hoa Lư, in a valley ringed by limestone walls a few kilometres north-west of the modern city. The Đinh and then the early Lê ruled from here for a little over forty years, until Lý Thái Tổ judged the site too cramped for a growing state and moved the court to Thăng Long in 1010. Hoa Lư became a country town with imperial temples, and the Trần kings later retreated into these same hills during the Mongol invasions.

The modern city grew up on the Đáy River as a provincial and market centre, and was fought over and heavily damaged during the wars of the 20th century, lying on the main road and rail line south from Hanoi. Kim Sơn district, reclaimed from the sea in the 1820s, became a stronghold of Vietnamese Catholicism. Tourism arrived late: Tam Cốc drew visitors from the 1990s, Tràng An's boat routes were developed from the 2000s, and the World Heritage listing in 2014 turned a quiet province into one of the country's busiest destinations. In January 2025 Ninh Bình city and the neighbouring Hoa Lư district were merged into a city called Hoa Lư; six months later Vietnam abolished district-level units altogether, and the province itself was enlarged by a merger with Nam Định and Hà Nam.

Ninh Bình carries its history lightly but knows it well. The Đinh and Lê emperors are treated less as distant figures than as local ancestors, honoured at the Hoa Lư temples with processions, water-fetching rites from the Hoàng Long river and folk games each spring. Hát xẩm, the begging songs traced to the Trần dynasty and performed by blind musicians at markets and river landings, is kept alive here by local troupes.

Religion is unusually visible and unusually mixed. Buddhist pilgrimage draws enormous crowds to Bái Đính, while Kim Sơn and the surrounding communes hold one of the oldest and densest Catholic populations in Vietnam, with village churches at close intervals and processions at Christmas and Easter that fill the roads. The stone and ironwood cathedral at Phát Diệm, built by a Vietnamese priest in the form of a communal house, is the emblem of that coexistence.

Village crafts survive in the ordinary way: rush and sedge weaving on the reclaimed coast, stone carving at Ninh Vân, embroidery at Văn Lâm beside the Tam Cốc pier. The shift to tourism has been fast and has changed the manners of the valley, where boat rowing is now allocated by turn among local households and much of a family's income can depend on the season's visitors.

Ninh Bình is a small provincial city by Vietnamese standards, with a population in the low hundreds of thousands, surrounded by densely settled farming communes. Rice remains the base of rural life on the flat land, along with goats on the limestone hills, aquaculture and shrimp ponds towards the coast, and pineapple and fruit on the southern slopes.

Industry matters more than the scenery suggests. Cement works exploit the limestone, a large vehicle assembly plant operates in the province, and garment and electronics factories along the expressway employ tens of thousands, many commuting by motorbike from villages. Tourism is the third leg, employing rowers, drivers, guides and homestay families around Tam Cốc, Tràng An and Bái Đính.

Daily life is early and rural in rhythm: fields worked before the heat, markets finished by mid-morning, children delivered to school by motorbike, and long quiet afternoons broken by the passage of tour coaches. The visible tension is between the two economies — quarrying and factory building on one side, a World Heritage landscape on the other — together with the speed of hotel and resort construction around the karst, the state of rural roads in the wet season, and flooding when the delta rivers rise.

Goat is what Ninh Bình is known for. Dê núi, raised on the limestone outcrops and said to be leaner and firmer for it, appears as dê tái chanh, briefly cooked and sliced thin with lemon leaf, green banana, star fruit and a fermented soybean sauce, as well as grilled, steamed, curried or minced. It is usually ordered with cơm cháy: the crust from the bottom of a rice pot, dried, deep-fried into brittle golden sheets and either served under a thick sauce of goat or beef or sold dry in packets as the province's standard gift.

The rivers and paddies supply the rest. Miến lươn, glass noodles with eel, is a delta staple taken seriously here; ốc núi, small snails that live in the limestone and are gathered mainly in the wet months, are steamed with lemongrass and picked out with a thorn. Cá kho, fish braised slowly in a clay pot with caramel and pepper, is everyday home cooking, and nem chua from Yên Mạc — fermented minced pork wrapped in leaves — is a well-known local product.

Kim Sơn on the coast distils rượu Kim Sơn, a strong clear rice spirit with a national reputation, and the same district grows the rushes woven into mats. Everyday drinking is otherwise the northern pattern: green tea at all hours and bia hơi at pavement tables in the evening.