The Wild North of Vietnam 7 Day Tour

Once you have touched down in Hanoi’s Noi Bai Airport, the driver will collect you and take you to your hotel in the center of the city.

Check-in here and take the rest of the day to either relax or explore.

Morning

Eat breakfast in your hotel; we will begin the first full day of your weeklong tour when the guide and driver arrive at your hotel. We make our first stop at the Ho Chi Minh Complex, where the great hero of Vietnam is honoured and remembered. The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum will be our first stop, where we can see the body of the leader himself, before moving onto his former stilt house where he maintained his humble life.

After this, we will head to any one of the following four museums: the Vietnam Military History Museum, Hoa Lo Prison, the Fine Arts Museum or the Vietnam Ethnology Museum. The guide will provide an introduction to each one and then the choice will be offered to you.

Afternoon

The afternoon starts with a delicious lunch at a local restaurant, which will introduce you to the flavours of Hanoi and Vietnam. After this we head to the Temple of Literature, Vietnam's first-ever university, established just after Hanoi was made its capital in 1010. This is a beautiful mixture of ornate stone architecture and green grounds, promoting the calm and philosophical atmosphere that helped past students to study the teachings of Confucius.

We follow this with a tour around Hanoi’s beating heart, its fabulous Hanoi Old Quarter. Hoan Kiem Lake and Ngoc Son Temple will be on our list of sites to visit as we stroll around the city’s bustling centre, finding a vast amount of beauty in its vibrant buildings and eclectic mix of architectural styles. We end the City Tour around Hanoi at your hotel in the late afternoon.

Take breakfast at your hotel before the guide and driver arrive. The two-hour drive to Ninh Binh Province will be a beautiful one, with some of your first sights of Vietnamese countryside stretching out on all sides.

In Ninh Binh, our first stop will be Tam Coc, an incredibly verdant village with natural beauty bursting at the seams. This is best seen from a sampan boat down its main river, so we will board one of these and relax as a local rows us through the enchanting scenery. On the 90-minute cruise, we see the best of lush Ninh Binh province; skyscraping limestone mountains adorned in trees, golden rice paddies growing straight from the riverbed and wet caves offering pre-historic frames for the ancient beauty on show.

After our ride, we enjoy lunch before moving onto Hoa Lu, the ancient capital of Vietnam and one-time residence for two of its emperors. The legends of King Dinh and King Le are strong in Hoa Lu, and both are honoured in temples bearing their names. We will take a stroll around these temples and the enclave outside to learn about Hoa Lu's history, which our guide will bring to life in the surroundings of forested limestone mountaintops. 

We take the drive back to Hanoi after the day tour to Tam Coc and Hoa Lu, where we will enjoy dinner before you relax at the hotel. At 8:30 pm, the driver will return to your hotel in order to take you to Hanoi’s main train station for the night train to Lao Cai in Sapa.

The guide and driver will be awaiting your arrival at Lao Cai Train Station, after which we will have breakfast and set off for Bac Ha Market. This is a weekly market where members of Vietnam’s ethnic minority tribes gather together and create a fantastic atmosphere of constant buying, selling and partying. Amongst the tribes selling their wares are the H’mong, Giay, Tay, and Red Dao, who sell livestock as well as colourful ethnic dress, handcrafted trinkets and a wealth of local food. After a couple of hours of exploration, we will sit down to some of this food in the shadows of surrounding mountains.

We head back to Sapa town and make a stop off at Trung Do Village, an enclave of the Tay ethnic minority. Here, we will find an array of traditional stilt houses - one of the endearing images of rural life in Vietnam - as well as incredible rice paddies beside the Chay River.

Returning to Sapa, we check into the hotel and have the rest of the afternoon and evening to explore the magical hill town.

Take breakfast in the hotel and meet the guide in the lobby. We will begin our easy trekking tour from here by heading to the Muong Hoa Valley, a jaw-dropping sight of cascading rice paddies crowned by the forested peaks of jagged mountains. We head down towards to Ta Van Village, a village of H’mong, Giay and Red Dao inhabitants living peacefully together. Here, and later at the village of Lao Chai, we will see the pristine scenery on offer in the form of swaying fields of rice and farmers dressed in vibrant clothing tending to their crop.

We will have a local lunch here before our free time in Sapa town. If you feel like more trekking, then you can head to Ham Rong Mountain, located within the town, or you could relax next to the central Sapa Lake.

In the early evening, the guide will transfer you to Lao Cai train station in order for you to catch your night train to Hanoi.

Note: The following itinerary is just an example itinerary, based off the most common route of cruises in Halong Bay. The exact itinerary that you will follow depends on that of the cruise company you select during booking with us.

Morning

We will arrive in Hanoi at about 5:00 am and will proceed to a day-use hotel to freshen up and enjoy breakfast. The driver will arrive between 8:00 and 8:30 am before starting the drive to Tuan Chau Harbour. Upon arrival at the harbour, we board the cruise and take in the first sights of Halong Bay’s incredible jutting spires in the distance.

Afternoon

The cruising starts with a delicious lunch served in the dining room, after which you can relax anywhere on board while we pass the gorgeous still-life painting of Halong Bay. Our first stop will be to Titop Island, where we can spend time relaxing or climbing to the top for a panoramic view. After this, we have a short transfer over to the Surprising Cave, where we can get a closer look at some of the phenomenal limestone geography around the bay.

Evening

Take in the beautiful sunset during a party on the top deck, when happy hour at the bar will be in full flow. A delectable dinner heralds the start of a tranquil evening on board, where you are free to relax or join the crew for a spot of moonlit squid fishing.

The day starts in a meditative manner with tai chi on the sundeck. Your last breakfast of the tour will follow this, so enjoy it in the dining room as the new morning light creeps up the karst towers around us. Our final activity today will be a kayaking excursion through Luon Cave, which partially obscures a hidden lake on the other side, surrounded by stretching rock walls.

We head back to the boat and have an early lunch on the way back to the harbour. Disembarking here, we return to Hanoi, where your driver can either drop you off at your hotel or, if you have an evening departure flight, at the airport.

This is the end of our weeklong tour in the north of Vietnam.

Thank you so much for joining us and we hope to see you again soon!