The fourth of five day tour excursions we included in our itinerary was a 2D1N trip to Ninh Binh, a city about 90km south of Hanoi, and famous for its limestone Karst scenery.
To begin, one big question that’s asked by a lot of travelers is whether you should go with a one day trip, or a 2D1N. Our advice: if you can afford the time in your itinerary, go with 2D1N.
We had seven places of visitation in our 2D1N itinerary. Of these seven, three I reckon are the ones that people really want to experience: the Van Long Natural Reserve, Trang An, and Hang Mua. You’d need at the bare minimum 1.5 hrs for the Van Long, 2 hours for Trang An, and 2 hours for Hang Mua – and this is assuming you are pretty fit and also don’t mind not spending too much time enjoying the views at the top. This also isn’t including the time it takes for you to get to Ninh Binh from Hanoi – it’d be at least 2 hours each way without stopovers, time to get between each of these three places, and lunch… well, you get the idea! Unless a 12 hour trip on a single day appeals to you, you really should just go with the 2D1N, or shorten the time you spend in one of these three places.
We also opted for a private tour for our Ninh Binh excursion. But if you’re thinking of the same, be mindful though that this will be very pricey compared to a group tour offered through travel aggregate web sites like Klook and Tripadvisor. Our 2D1N with Hanoi Tours Expert cost us SGD910, and it can be slightly cheaper if you opt for a four instead of five star hotel for your overnight (more on that later). Our itinerary could also be customised since it was a private tour, and this was what we settled on pre-departure:
Day 01:
Hanoi to Ninh Binh (2.5 hrs) [Pick-up at 8AM]
Van Long Natural Reserve (1.5 hrs)
Hoa Lu Ancient Capital (45 minutes)
Lunch
Tràng An (2 hrs)
Hotel check-in and dinner
Day 02:
Cycling at Tam Roc (30 minutes) [we ended up skipping this eventually]
Bich Dong pagoda (30 minutes)
Mua Cave (2.5 hrs)
Hotel check-out
Lunch
Phat Diem Cathedral (30 minutes)
Return to Hanoi (2.5 hrs) [Back in Hanoi hotel at 5PM]
Our comments from our Ninh Binh excursion with Hanoi Tours Expert. This will be a very long post, so it’s split into two parts.
Van Long Natural Reserve: from Wikipedia’s entry of this place: This is one of the few intact lowland inland wetlands remaining in the Hong River Delta. Limestone karst is surrounded by the freshwater lake, marshes and swamps. The wetland can’t be explored on foot: you’d need to take a small row boat. The boat can sit two to three visitors each. The ticket for the row boat was included in our package. But be aware: you are expected to tip your boat rower. Our guide suggested a VND10,000 tip. I gave VND20,000 to each of our two boat rowers: one of the two rowers looked unhappy, while the other was extremely grateful. Weird!
The wetland is beautiful, and we were not only blessed with reasonably good weather during our visit, but also that for most of our ride, we were the only boats around. We really enjoyed this ride, and recommend you don’t shorten your time here.
I launched the drone for two separate flights, and got some excellent videos with it. Do note: you will likely have to land your drone on your row boat, and keep in mind too your boat rower, try as he might, will not be able to keep the boat absolutely still i.e. practice your precision landings, or master hand catching your drone when it lands! On this, my first landing was perfect, but the second landing was slightly off when the boat suddenly moved half a feet when the drone had almost landed, and my barely three month old drone nearly dropped in the water. Having done this boat ride, my advice would be to, if possible, keep your drone flying until your boat docks back at the small pier, then quickly bring your drone back onto solid land.
Hoa Lu Ancient Capital: from Wikimapia, and slightly edited for readability: Hoa Lu was the capital of Vietnam in the 10th and 11th centuries. In the late 10th century, Hoa Lu was the capital as well as the economic, political and cultural center of Đại Cồ Việt. The capital at Hoa Lu covered an area of 300 ha (3.0 km2), including both the Inner and Outer Citadels. It included defensive earthen walls, palaces, temples and shrines, and was surrounded and protected by mountains of limestone. Today, the ancient citadel no longer exists, and few vestiges of the 10th century remain. Visitors can see temples built in honor of the emperors Dinh Tien Hoang and Le Dai Hanh, their sons, and Queen Duong Van Nga, who was married first to Dinh Tien Hoang and then to Le Dai Hanh.
The site ground is fairly large, and there were a large number of Vietnamese young ladies in traditional apparel doing photo shoots. The place is visually interesting and rich in history, but if you’ve been to the old Chinese temples, palaces and residences of their royalty, then what you’re seeing here might not be too different. If you’re absolutely pressed for time, I reckon you can drop this from your itinerary.
Tràng An: recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2014, and known for its boat tours that will take visitors through caves. Our tour company itinerary notes that the scenery in Trang An is very similar to Halong Bay, with its high mountains surrounded by vegetation areas and mantles of water.
There are three different boat routes that visitors can take, and this web site here provides a good explanation of your options. We went with the second route, and the route took us 2 hours. The sights are amazing and limestone mountains majestic. A couple of caves will have barely sufficient clearance for your heads, so listen carefully to your rower: when he says ‘duck’, you’d better duck and keep your head as low as possible! Tips are also necessary here. In fact, our boat rower even before finishing said to us us in an expectant voice ‘Tips’.
You might also be wondering whether it’s necessary to do two boat rides in Ninh Binh: this, and also the Van Long Natural Reserve. Both are very different: the Van Long reserve is a fair bit more open in scenery and much less crowded, and the boat route is shorter. Trang An has a lot more boats operating the routes: I counted up to 60 boats out and stopped counting after that! It was hard to take wide landscape shots without having other boats in my framing. The number of limestone mountains is also much higher, and there’s a real sense of being in the wilderness in Trang An as the boat travels its route.
I didn’t bother trying to fly the drone in Trang An either, on account that there were so many boats in the area, and there was a good chance I would be flying smack into one of those many mountains. But unlike Van Long, and depending on your boat route, there are a couple of land places for you to land your drone – basically the temple grounds, but this also depends on whether you can convince your boat rower to do a private stop at the places you want to launch from.
Continued in the next post!