Prominent places to visit in North Vietnam include capital Hanoi, Ban Gioc falls, Ha Long Bay, rice terraces of Sapa
Hanoi
Hanoi is another cute city with charming old quarter and French quarters. You can spend a day walking around visiting Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, Thang Long citadel, sites in old quarter like Bach Ma temple, Hoan Kiem Lake, Huc bridge, Ngoc Son temple, Opera house, St Joseph’s cathedral
Ho Chi Minh mausoleum is resting place of the great leader with his embalmed body on display. The queues are very long on weekends, but fast moving. Expect 30-45 min+ waiting time. You are supposed to leave bags in the locker and not carry anything inside. Phone and wallets were allowed inside
We then visited Temple of Literature. The building is an ancient one and quite large, quite visible from outside and standing out from rest of buildings. There are multiple buildings inside with tiled roofs, dedicated to Confucius and scholars
The Hoan Kiem lake the icon of Hanoi with Huc bridge leading to Ngoc Son temple. You can see mummified sword turtles here that used to reside in sword lake
The famous water puppet show is performed at Thang Long theatre. It gets sold out, so better book online if you prefer specific date and times. The show was very entertaining and funny, even for adults although the music and narration was entirely in Vietnamese. You can see dragons spraying water, agriculture process, fishing, and some mythological stories enacted through puppets. It lasted for 50 minutes. We took VIP seats and had a very good view of the show from second row. The price difference is not much, so highly recommend taking seats in the front. The show is available in multiple cities, but is typically cheapest in Hanoi
Train street
About 15 min walk from the water puppet show Theatre, you can witness the famous train street where trains zoom past very close to a line of shops. The timetable is quite ad-hoc though. We found multiple versions online, but there was no train the day we went in the evening time. Best to check with a local shop in the afternoon and arrive at the right time in the evening
Halong Bay
UNESCO World Heritage site with karst mountains on the sea. We took a 2 day cruise, but it felt short since it is activity packed. You start at 8 AM from Hanoi and reach the pier around 11:30- 12 noon with a 30 min rest stop in the middle. You are then transferred on a small boat into the large cruise boat. Lunch follows immediately after boarding. Typical itinerary on Route No 2 includes a stop at Ti Top to for views from the top, Sung Sot cave before dinner. Ti Top island hike takes 400+ steps and 10-15 minutes if crowd is moderate.
There are activities like cooking class, squid fishing, Tai Chi onboard to while away time post dark. Breakfast was at 7 AM, checkout at 9:30 AM and lunch at 10:30 AM. There was kayaking or bamboo boat at Luon cave in the morning post breakfast. You are back at the pier by 11:30 AM
The cruises run like an efficient assembly line everyday. You can also opt for day tour as you don’t miss much on activities, but we opted to stay onboard to experience the sun rise and avoid hectic travel back at night reaching Hanoi around 11 PM
The cabins felt a little old and bathrooms worn out but you don’t end up spending time inside anyway. Hot water for shower was available only in the evening. We strongly recommend going with Sunlight.
Ninh Binh: Halong Bay on Land
Cuc Phoung National Park
We specifically visited this place to see the langurs native to Vietnam. The national park is 3 hours away from Hanoi and about 45-60 minutes away from Trang An. One of the species here, the Red Shanked Doucs are like painted dolls- they are critically endangered and the National park is doing a very good job of protecting animals and training to release them. We could see Cat Ba Langurs and other primates not seen anywhere else in the world. We were lucky to hear the gibbons on release training sing n the afternoon- they typically do this everyday during sunrise. Some people stay overnight in the park just to hear them
We were lucky second time to see a pangolin at the carnivore centre. They are nocturnal, typically asleep during the day but the day we visited was an exception. They don’t mention about this while buying tickets, so take your risk. You can anyway see other animals like snow leopards, binturongs if pangolins choose to sleep
You will have to pay separate entry fees for the park (60k VND), engandered primate centre, pangolin centre and turtle centre (60k VND each). A guide from the park will accompany you to each centre and share an overview. You are supposed to wear masks provided with tickets at the primate centre. We skipped the turtle centre basis reviews
Trang An grottoes
Another UNESCO World Heritage site where you see caves carved by river on a boat ride amidst mighty karst mountains. The ticket and waiting centre itself was scenic and colorful. The boat ride costed 250k VND per person ($10)
We thought quite a lot about Tam Coc vs. Trang An and decided with Trang An given the length of caves, closeness to mountains and lesser extent of tipping culture among rowers
We took route number 3 since it included the largest Dot cave spanning 1 km with lot of natural stalactites. The other caves were widened artificially on this route and felt less natural. Ensure you visit Thung Vu temple from Suoi Tien temple through the walkway beside the river along the cave. You will have to keep walking for 3-5 mins to reach the other side which hardly has tourists
The rowers did not ask for tips, but we did end up giving some willingly. They were quite curt, following up to be back on the boat despite not taking too much time. The itinerary mentioned 3 hours but we were back by 2.5 hrs. We would have enjoyed the place a lot more if we had more time in hand
We skipped Mua Cave since it involved a lot of steps and we wanted to visit Bai Dinh pagoda in the time we had. Mua cave is visited less for caves and more for the awesome views of karst mountains in the region. We had seen views of karst mountains at Ban Gioc and we could also see some from the top of the pagoda
Bai Dinh Pagoda
A huge area covering 500+ acres. We strongly recommend here going in the evening to see both the day and night views. Some reviews did mention it is artificial and seems like Disney land, but we were quite in awe of the scale of build. The lift to top of highest pagoda was worth it to get a nice view of the region and lit up buildings at night. The evening lighting transforms the beauty of entire complex
The halls have gigantic golden statues of Buddha and the Arhat corridor walkway has hundreds of statues lining up the entire way. There is enough to spend the entire day if you have the time. We ended up spending 2-3 hours since we only reached around 4 PM
Entry is free, but you have to pay for buggy transfer to the entrance which is 3+ kms away from the ticket counter, making it practically impossible to walk unless you spend the whole day here, and for the lift of Bai Dinh Pagoda (option 2 on the board you see there). We did not take the shuttle option for point to point transfers within the complex since the buildings are close to each other and shuttles operate only from specific point to next one. You get a band if you take the shuttle option and we heard at times it is possible to go directly to the destination you want within the complex
While the brochure mentioned it is possible to exit from gate 29 backwards, we did not find any buggy or direction board to reach there and walked back to station 4 all over which was quite frustrating
Cao Bang: Ban Gioc falls, Tiger cave, Angel eye
It takes almost an entire day to reach Ban Gioc falls from Hanoi (340 km), hence one of the less visted places. We strongly recommend adding this to your itinerary- The journey is beautiful, destination even more beautiful and gives you a real feel of rural Vietnam away from the hustle and man made structures of the city
Ban Gioc falls/ Detian falls happens to be on the Vietnam China border. It is a 3 layered falls where you can experience it from close quarters by taking a boat to the bottom. Boats from Chinese and Vietnam side take tourists on a loop and return back to respective sides. The dam water is released around 10:30- 11 AM, so ensure you stay after that to see falls with lot of water
The Chinese side has much better infrastructure and viewing points, but that does not stop you from getting awesome views. Climb up the Phat Tich Truc Lam pagoda about 5 mins from the falls on vehicle to see all three layers and holistic view of the region with karst mountains. If you find the climb difficult, you can take the motorbikes for 25k VND to drop you on top
Tiger Cave is another superb destination very close to the falls. You can see huge and shiny stalactites and stalagmites. Don’t miss the lotus stalactite which is quite unique. It is on the right side midway, so don’t follow the exit sign and ignore the Lotus stalactite sign that is posted in front of another closed trail. The cave is about a km long and we ended up spending 1.5 hrs here. There is another route (195k VND per person) that requires a guide to accompany you covering larger areas of the cave- we skipped it since it could involve slippery terrain and we were also short of time
On the way back, we took a slight detour for 30 mins to see Angel Eye. It was a quick visit before we headed back to Hanoi. If time permits, you can also go to Tam Thanh cave pagoda at Lang Son as a rest stop midway. It was closed when we reached there at 6 PM
We booked a 2 day cab option with driver from Vietnam Budget car rental. The service was good, with responsible car drivers. We had some miscommunication regarding extra charges for covering Angel Eye with the driver, but that was sorted smoothly by messaging their office. We had to ask a day prior for driver details and it came before the morning of travel. You can pay by card, there is 3-4% extra charges for that
