If you have the opportunity to be in Hanoi, try to catch ride to see Trang An / Bai Dinh! There’s a boat tour through a large river, usually done by locals where you cross 7 underwater caves and visit different prayer altars on small hikes. This tour can be continued to the Bai Dinh Temple, one of the largest buddhist temple complex in Vietnam.
Start: Hanoi
How much time to spend: Day Trip / For us it was from 5am – 4pm
Transport Costs: We paid for the Limousine Transport 300.000 each person from Hanoi with return
Entrance Fee Trang An: 200.000 VND per Adult for the Trang An Boat Tour
Entrance Fee Bai Dinh: Free, but there’ll be a 30.000 VND costs for the electric car transport to the temples
Highlights: Paddling with the boat through caves / Mini hikes to altars / Exploring the Bai Dinh temples
Avoid this tour around the tet time!
I did this tour three times, two times with my family and another one with my Astronaut buddy Felix April 2017.
Getting there
There are multiple ways how to get there. The most convenient one is to book a tour from your hostel/hotel in Hanoi where you’ll probably also get a guide.
But it’s also possible to go by your own and book a Limousine ride. Just google for ‚Limousine bus trang an bai dinh‘. It takes about 2 hours to get to Trang An from Hanoi.
To start the day off, there’s of course a noodle soup for breakfast!! On the road we found a Bánh đa chả restaurant and took a small break there to enjoy delicous noodle brooth with some fish and amazing veggies.
My uncle enjoying his breakfast!
Morning glory if you start early enough 🙂 #6am
Trang An Boat Tour
After arriving you can purchase a ticket at the reception (200.000 VND) and go to one of the many boats where super friendly womens will paddle you around the river. They don’t get much money for what they’re doing so feel free to help them with the available paddles for support. I think it’s fairly impressive to see how the womens are carrying people the whole day and even more if they start to do it with their feet!
Paddling by feet. Pretty impressive!
First to say: The view is amazing! The rock formation reminded me a bit of those in Ha Long, but in much more dense and more green grown manner. Do you know the movie Kong? God, the vietnamese people are so proud of it where everyone likes to remind you that the film was shot over there. Btw, it’ll be probably not only Trang An where the guides are gonna talk about Kong ;‘)
View of the rock before we’re getting through it below!
You‘ll get through 7 caves with the boat which vary in their size and length. It‘s kind of adventerous and exciting to paddle through water and dodge the rocks above you, because some paths get really narrow. Especially if there’s rain time, you’ll probably not be able to get through all caves. On the way the ladies will let you off some spots for small walks to visit altars. It’s very common for the vietnamese people to go on those kind of tours to pray.
Watch out for your heads! ;‘)
Bai Dinh Temple
The tour continues at the Bai Dinh Temple. You can grab a cheap cab to get to the reception of the Bai Ding Temple.
Although it’s free to get in there. If you dont want to walk half a hour in the burning sun, you probably need to book an electric car to get to the temples from the reception…
This Buddhist Temple Complex is actually the biggest one in Vietnam. You can easily spend half a day here due the size of this complex! Over 700 hectars of large halls, courtyards and enclosures which are filled with beautiful statues and altars.
There are a lot of statues. And if I say a lot, it’s really A LOT
Speaking of gold….. I never saw that much gold in real life on a statue.
There’s a Hiking Journey of this trip on YouTube.
