Ninh Binh and Pu Luong, four days

At a glance

Duration

4 days, 3 nights

Party size

2 to 8, private

Starts

Hanoi, Noi Bai airport

Ends

Hanoi, Noi Bai airport or a city hotel

Effort

Moderate — roughly 500 steps on Day 3, 5 km on foot at most

From

USD 990 per person

Who this is for

Four days, and a preference for water and farmland over a boat cabin. This route takes the two places in the north that reward a short trip most: the flooded limestone basin south of Hanoi, where the karst towers stand in rice fields rather than in the sea, and the Pu Luong valley three hours west of it, which is a working farming landscape that happens to be beautiful rather than a landscape kept for visitors.

The pairing works because the two halves are opposites. Ninh Binh is busy, ticketed and organised: boat piers, temple gates, counters that open at seven. Pu Luong has none of that, and after the drive west the day slows down to the speed of a footpath between two hamlets. Doing them in that order means the trip gets quieter as it goes, which is the right way round when you fly home at the end of it.

Three days would mean dropping one half, and neither half survives being reduced to an afternoon. If you have five, the Mai Chau and Pu Luong five-day trip gives the valley two nights instead of one and adds a second Thai valley to it; if the priority is water rather than hills, the five-day version with Lan Ha Bay keeps Ninh Binh and swaps Pu Luong for a night on a boat.

Day by day

Day 1

Arrive in Hanoi

Your guide and driver meet you inside the arrivals hall at Noi Bai with a name board. The transfer into the city is 45 minutes and 25 km. Rooms are held from midday, so an early landing does not mean sitting in a lobby with your bags.

The rest of the day is yours, and if you land before 16:00 we use the late afternoon on foot around Hoan Kiem lake and the Old Quarter — an hour and a half, no tickets, mainly to get you walking after a long flight. Your guide runs through the next morning before dinner: a 07:30 departure, what to wear on a boat that has no shade, and how much cash to carry for the Trang An counter.

StayBoutique hotel, Old Quarter or French QuarterMealsNoneTravel45 minutes, 25 km from the airportOn foot2 km, flat, late afternoon

Day 2

South to Hoa Lu and a boat through Trang An

A whole Trang An boat to your party, on the water by 13:30

Leave at 07:30 for the 95 km run south, which takes 1 hour 45 on the expressway. First stop is Hoa Lu, the capital of Vietnam from 968 until the court moved north to what is now Hanoi in 1010. Two temples stand on the site, one for Dinh Tien Hoang and one for Le Dai Hanh, both rebuilt in the seventeenth century. Almost nothing of the citadel itself survives, and a guide who tells you otherwise is filling time — what is worth the hour is the setting, a flat plain closed on every side by limestone.

Trang An in the afternoon, on the water by about 13:30. The counters sell from 07:00 to 17:00 on a first-come basis; a boat holds four passengers plus the rower, at 250,000 VND per seat or 1,000,000 VND for the whole boat, and we charter the whole boat so you are not paired with strangers and can stop where you want. Route 1 is the long one, three to four hours through nine caves and past three temples. Route 3 runs about three hours through three caves and passes the set built for Kong: Skull Island, which is a reconstruction of a village and is either a curiosity or a waste of forty minutes depending on the traveller. Your guide will ask which you want, at the pier, with the time of day in front of both of you. The cave roofs come down to about a metre above the water in places and everyone ducks.

StayValley hotel or converted farmhouse, Tam CocMealsBreakfast, lunchTravel1 hr 45, 95 km on the expresswayOn foot2 km, plus the temple steps at Hoa Lu

Day 3

Mua Cave at first light, Bich Dong, then west to Pu Luong

On the Mua Cave steps at 06:00, before the heat and the coaches

Out of the hotel at 05:45 for Mua Cave, which is not really a cave visit at all but a staircase — roughly 500 steps of uneven limestone up a ridge, with a handrail on part of the climb and none on the rest. At the top the Tam Coc valley opens below you and the river runs through the paddies in three long bends. At six in the morning there are perhaps a dozen people on the ridge; by nine there are several hundred and the light is flat. Anyone who would rather not climb waits at the foot with coffee, or goes straight on to Bich Dong with the driver.

Bich Dong afterwards: a pagoda on three levels built into the cliff, reached over a stone bridge and then up through the rock itself, with the top shrine standing in the open air above the trees. Back for breakfast, then the drive west into what is now Thanh Hoa, roughly 100 km on small roads, two and a half to three hours. The last hour climbs. You arrive in Pu Luong in the middle of the afternoon, with time to walk down to the stream below the lodge, where bamboo waterwheels four or five metres across turn day and night lifting water up into the terraces. Dinner is cooked in the house.

StayThai stilt-house lodge, valley view, fan and mosquito netMealsBreakfast, lunch, dinnerTravelRoughly 100 km, 2 hrs 30 to 3 hrsOn foot3 km including about 500 steps

Day 4

A morning in the valley, then Hanoi

A walk of four to five kilometres after breakfast, between two Thai hamlets on the paths the farmers use, along the contour of the terraces rather than up and down them. Your guide explains the waterwheel, which is the only piece of engineering in the valley that matters: no pump, no fuel, just the stream turning a wheel that tips water into a bamboo flume and along the top of the highest paddy. Where the terraces are in stubble your guide says so rather than pointing at a photograph of October.

Lunch in the valley, then 175 km and four hours back to Hanoi. That puts you at Noi Bai comfortably for a flight after 19:00 and uncomfortably for one before 17:00; if your flight is the next morning we drop you at a city hotel instead, and the guide books dinner if you want it. Parties who would rather not do the drive on the last day add a second Pu Luong night and travel back on Day 5.

Stay—MealsBreakfast, lunchTravel4 hrs, 175 km to Hanoi or Noi BaiOn foot4 to 5 km on valley paths, muddy after rain

What it costs

The three columns buy different rooms, not different attention. Guide, driver, vehicle, boat charter and every ticket are the same in all three. What moves is where you sleep: a plain valley hotel in Ninh Binh against a converted farmhouse with a pool, and in Pu Luong a fan room in a stilt house against a timber bungalow with hot water that works at six in the morning. The gap between the columns is narrower on this trip than on our bay routes, because Pu Luong has no five-star anything and we will not pretend otherwise.

Party size moves the number far more than class does. Two people carry an entire vehicle, driver and guide between them for four days; eight people carry the same three things and pay about a quarter less each. Nothing else in the quotation behaves like that. The supplier-level breakdown behind these figures is on what a Vietnam trip costs, and how to book sets out the deposit and the cancellation terms before you commit to a date.

Included and not included

Pictures from this route

Who this trip is not for

Five reasons to book something else, and we would rather you read them now than discover them on Day 3.

• Anyone who cannot spend three hours sitting still in a small boat with no shade and no lavatory. Route 1 at Trang An runs three to four hours and there is no point at which you can get off early. Route 3 shortens it to three hours; below that, this is the wrong trip.
• Travellers who need every night to be a hotel. The Pu Luong lodge is a timber stilt house: thin walls, a fan rather than air conditioning in the cheaper class, insects, and a cockerel that starts before you do.
• Anyone unsteady on uneven stone. The Mua Cave staircase is about 500 steps of worn limestone, and the walk on Day 4 crosses earth banks between paddies that are slick after rain. Both are skippable, but skipping both leaves you sitting in a car.
• Parties who want the golden terraces at any time of year. The rice turns in late September and is cut by the middle of October. Come in February and you are looking at brown water and stubble in a fine landscape — real, and not what the photographs sold you.
• Anyone hoping to add Ha Long Bay to this. The pier is 170 km from Hanoi in the opposite direction and does not fit; take the five-day route instead.

How the days actually run