Ninh Binh Full Day Small Group Bai Dinh Trang An Mua Cave Tour

The Ninh Binh Tour of 1 day was very nicely organised. The experience right from picking up from hotel to drop off was on time and systematic. The tour guide Alex was very kind and helpful. The activities were organised very well. No delay or rush anywhere.

Highly recommend this amazing day tour to Ninh Binh, including the Big Budah at Bai Dinh temple, river boat through the stunning Trang An waterways and ultimate challenge climbing Hang Mua mountain to touch the Dragon. Our friendly tour guide Lee was very entertaining and enthusiastic he made the day extremely enjoyable.

As planned visited Bai dinh, Caves and Trang An. Caves boat tour was a bit long, 1 hour on the boat would have been enough. I recall the method of transport described as “limousine auto” when i booked it but it ended up being a normal bus - A/C and seat worked ok. Some locations were too busy with tourists, perhaps a weekday would have been better … or stay over night in ninh binh and start earlier… Food at lunch as average, lack of flavour, felt like cheap tourist canteen. Tour guide was good, shared some historical facts and spoke a good english. Although we were not forced to do so, same as in most of asian countries due to poor wages for locals you feel like you have to tip the boat fella, and the bus driver etc. We had about 20 people in this tour - i personally prefer smaller groups of 10-12 max, otherwise you always have to wait mr X and mr Z gone missing. It was a mix of 2 groups in my tour, 2 different tour options mixed basically - leading to more people on the tour. It’s a long day, especially with traffic - a good 10-12 hours trip at least in total. Give this tour a 7/10.

Ninh Binh is a lovely place that is definitely worth visiting. To some this place is prettier than Ha Long Bay. We visited both and I would suggest everyone else do the same. There are some things that I did not like. First the bus was not a very comfortable bus. There is no overhead rack to put even a small thing like a backpack. And it's tight. I hate to say this but our tour guide did not speak English very well. I wasn't expecting Shakespeare but his English was terrible and at some times it was just easier to do Google translate and show him what we wanted to communicate. He was a very nice person but his English was not that great. The boat ride in Trang An is 1.45 mins. It's very beautiful but your rear and back will be hurting by the time it is over. The sequence in which you visit the three places was the Pagoda first, followed by the boat ride followed by the walk up mua caves . By the time we reached Mua caves it was close to 5 pm and by the time we started walking back down it was dark. I know that is not not the tour guide's fault but it is the tour companies fault that they do not schedule the 3 stops correctly. My advice to everyone is to find a tour that will take you to the Trang An river first followed by the walk-up to the caves and then visit the Pagoda last. This may not be possible since I got the impression that every single tour was following the same sequence of stops. And there is too much time being wasted in the mandatory stop that the bus has to take (which the tour guide will tell you is to allow the driver to take some rest, but is complete BS) and at lunch. One last criticism is about our driver. He must have been the slowest driver on the road. Doing 60 kmph on a highway where the minimum speed is 80 kmph. Every single car, bus and trick was passing us.

Very good tour and very good guide recommended, not so extensive and good transport is comfortable and done everything

Great time, great guide. Highly recommend. Bring a change of clothes, water and extra cash. It gets hot in the sun. Beautiful nature.

This was an excellent and enjoyable tour of four sites in the area. Our guide Thang was very helpful and informative. He was pleasant and attentive, and made our small group tour a personalised experience. The lunch buffet was delicious, and the boat cruise was outstanding.

Our tour to Ninh Binh with Hanoi explore travel was amazing. The staff was very efficient and helpful. We were running behind due to traffic so I contacted the tour operator. They spoke to our taxi driver and rerouted us to a different pick up point. The tour was very well organized and Hoang was wonderful. He was funny & explained things at each stop. All 3 sights were spectacular! The Pagodas were stunning, the boat ride through the caves at Trang An was so unique & beautiful. The buffet lunch was very tasty too. We highly recommend this tour with Hanoi Explore Travel.

Alex did a wonderful job on this very enjoyable tour. He provided just the right amount of interesting information along the way. I especially enjoyed learning about the 2 different graves explanation. Lunch stop was nice and quaint and was far nicer than were I saw the other tour busses.

Ms Thao was extremely helpful and friendly during the entirety of the tour. We wanted to visit these three locations and only had one day in Ninh Binh, however she made it happened. If you have no time and have same preference, pick this tour. The private tour is best as we avoided 90% of tour buses and lines, so it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves at multiple occasions. Also, Thao is a local Ninh Binh guide so she might be one of your best choices for these tours!