Jan 8, 2026
Recommended - Very good tour and very good guide recommended, not so extensive and good transport is comfortable and done everything
Review provided by Viator
Oct 4, 2025
Great experience! - Great time, great guide. Highly recommend. Bring a change of clothes, water and extra cash. It gets hot in the sun. Beautiful nature.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
May 8, 2025
An excellent tour - 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.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Nov 21, 2024
Amazing tour to Ninh Binh - 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.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Jul 17, 2024
Must do - absolutely worth the ride from Old town - 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.
Review provided by Viator
Dec 10, 2023
Trang An, Bai Dinh, Mua Cave - 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!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Dec 10, 2023
All the highlights of Ninh Binh in a day! - My friend and I were short on time in Hanoi so we booked a private tour with this company to do a day trip to Ninh Binh. This tour gives you the best highlights all in a day if you're short on time trying to squeeze in a visit to Ninh Binh. Got a good mixture of Mua Caves hike up to the Dragon mountain, amazing Trang An river views, also visited some beautiful Temples! Ms. Thao was our guide and she's a local to the area doing the tour for 15 years. She was the best about capturing photos for us, it was like having a professional photographer with us on the tour, she's great with angles and best spots! She was patient with our questions and gave us lots of local history, it definitely felt so sincere since she's sharing with us about her hometown. We will definitely try to visit again another season. Also the private driver they gave us picked us up from the hotel and transferred to each location in a comfortable well conditioned car. Highly recommended to do a private tour with the car to have logistics handled for you. Thank you Ms. Thao for your time with us and giving us some of the yummy grapefruit!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Oct 27, 2023
A fantastic private tour worth every penny - We had a private tour of Mua Cave, Trang An and Bai Dinh Bagoda and it was worth every penny. Our guide, Thao was so friendly and knowledgeable. It is so worth having a local to take you around as they know the best times to visit and Thao made sure we were very well treated.
The places we visited were simply amazing and scaling Mua Cave was so worth it for the stunning views. The boat trip along Trang An was so tranquil and the scenery was nothing like we’ve seen before.
Thao accompanied us throughout the day and took some wonderful photos that we will treasure.
We were picked up and taken to each destination in an air conditioned car and our driver was excellent.
Overall the whole day was fantastic and we can recommend Thao highly enough.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Jan 31, 2026
Tour was ok - 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.
Review provided by Viator
Jan 12, 2026
Beautiful place to visit, room for improvement - 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.
Review provided by Tripadvisor