3 Day Ba Be Lake and Ban Gioc Tour

We start the 3 day Ba Be Lake and Ban Gioc tour from your hotel when our guide will come to pick you up at 08:00 and take the two-hour drive up to Thai Nguyen city.

Once we have arrived, we will take a look around the Museum of Vietnamese Ethnic Culture, which covers the fantastic and highly individual cultures of Vietnam’s 53 ethnic minority groups.

After this, we continue onto Pac Ngoi village, which we find on the gorgeous shores of Ba Be Lake. We will be able to observe the daily lives of one of the ethnic minorities we just learned about at the museum – the Tay people, who are warmly welcoming and live in beautiful stilt houses. We check into one such house, which will be our homestay for the night, before enjoying lunch in the village.

We proceed to Ba Be Lake to find its shimmering surface stretching for miles. We board a  boat and make our way across the vast expanse, finding primitive beauty rising up on all sides. On our leisurely cruise, we pass towering mountains and tree-lined embankments, along with the local Tay people going about their daily fishing and farming business.

Following our tranquil lake tour, we return to our homestay in Pac Ngoi village and relax until dinner. Our evening meal will be a delicious, local affair made with love from our wonderful hosts. We stay overnight here under a blanket of stars.

We have breakfast in the hotel before taking the highly scenic drive through Bac Ken province and up to Cao Bang province, where Ban Gioc waterfall awaits. On the way, we make our first stop at Phuc Sen, a blacksmithing village famous for crafting exquisite tools from metal. Our guide will introduce us to the traditions of the Nung ethnic minority, who live and work close to the Chinese border.

Continuing past awe-inspiring nature, we arrive at Ban Gioc Waterfall, directly on the boundary of Vietnam and China. We have lunch here and spend much of the afternoon soaking up the incredible atmosphere of Ban Gioc, regularly voted amongst the most beautiful waterfalls in the world. Here, you have free time to enjoy the falls at your own leisure, either on a boat trip, by swimming in the rock pools or by taking pictures of the incredible scenery around it.

After this, we visit Nguom Ngao Cave, also called the Tiger Cave, lying just to the west of Ban Gioc. Our guide will give us a comprehensive tour of the insides of the cave, which contains uniquely and naturally shaped limestone formations and a wealth of human history.

We proceed to Cao Bang city after this to settle into our hotel for the final night of this 3 day tour of Ba Be Lake and Ban Gioc Waterfall

Take breakfast at the hotel and enjoy a morning of free time in and around Cao Bang city. Along the way back to Hanoi we may visit some 1 or 2 villages on the way seeing local people in Northeast Vietnam.

We have lunch in the town and take the 6-hour drive back to Hanoi, stopping for rests and photo opportunities of iconic Vietnamese scenery along the way.

Once arrived back at the capital, we drop you off at your hotel and draw the 3 day Ba Be Lake and Ban Gioc tour to a close.