Northeast Vietnam Adventure

Vietnam Great Tours driver and tour guide will welcome you with the VIETNAM GREAT TOUR LOGO & your name on signboard at the airport and drive you to the hotel. The rest of day will be your own.

After breakfast, we will pick you up at your hotel and depart for Ha Giang city, where is the final frontier in northern Vietnam, an amazing landscape of limestone pinnacles and granite outcrops.
Arrival Ha Giang at noon time, you will have free time for relaxing.

After breakfast, we will start the drive to Dong Van. On the way, you will visit Bac sum sloping street, Quan Ba pass and Quan Ba Heaven Gate, where you’ll get your first taste of exhilarating views along with challenging, tight curves.
Cruising down from Heaven’s Gate Pass, you’ll arrive in Tam Sơn – a town surrounded by jutting, forested hills — just in time for lunch.
In the afternoon, we will visit Sung la village, which is village of white H’Mong people, the place in the movie Pao’s story, which has won the award” The Golden Kite “of the Vietnam Cinema Association. Enjoy nice view and visit traditional house of local people in there as well as visiting H’ mong King palace – Vuong Chi sinh. It is a unique place, home of the H’mong King, whose architecture is influenced by three cultures: Chinese, French and Hmong. It was also used during the French colonization as a secret storage room for opium.

If you are lucky to be travelling in Dong Van on a Sunday morning, do not miss out on the weekly market which gathers all the local ethnic minorities in the area and gives you the unique opportunity to walk through the crowd, witness the trade market of buffalos, cows or chickens, or be dazzled by the colourful booths of traditional ethnic clothes.
You will then visit Ma pi Leng pass this is one in 4 passes bigest and highest of Vietnam, a must-see destination in Ha Giang. You will stroll around the valley, cling to the side of the undulating mountains, overlooking the Nho Que river, giving unrivalled views of the valleys and terraced hemp fields, which decorate the mountainsides. Walking this path will give you feelings you have never experienced before.
After lunch, we will come back to Ha Giang city with a visit at Lung Tam village, a village of H’ Mong people.

After your breakfast at the hotel, the fullday journey takes you back to Hanoi.

After breakfast, our tour guide will pick you up at your hotel, then transfer you to Lang Son. We will start by driving in the direction of the Chinese border for about 3 hours, before stopping at Chi Lang Pass – a 20-km-long gorge created from a narrow valley between two mountains. This place occupies an important position in Vietnamese history, being the place of many victories against various Chinese invasions over the centuries and millennia, as far back as 981AD. As such it bears the reputation of Vietnam’s strongest citadel and bastion. Here you will have roughly an hour to walk around and explore the area around the Quy Mon Quan Gate, which translates as “The Gate of Monsters”, named for the many invasion forces that would spill through the pass over the course of history only to be beaten back by stalwart Vietnamese defenders.
After lunch at a local restaurant in Dong Dang, you will continue your trip into the pass, stopping to visit Mother’s Temple and Dong Khe – an important historical site where The Battle of Dong Khe was fought during the First Indochina War. In fact, this was the very first battle of the Indochina Wars, and the fighting here took place through September and October 1950, ending in a resounding victory for the Viet Minh. In the evening you will get to enjoy dinner and overnight rest in a local homestay owned and operated by a local Nung family.

After enjoying breakfast at the homestay, you will depart for Trung Khanh which lies right on the border with China. Here you will have another chance to meet and interact with the local Nung people living in the village of Phuoc Sen, a mountainous village famous for its traditional blacksmithing. The farming tools made here are an integral part of the lifestyle which is evident in the surrounding rice paddies and fields. Nestled amongst these amazing landscapes is the breath-taking Ban Gioc Waterfall which spans over 300 meters, split half and half between Vietnam and China. You’ll get some time here to simply take in the amazing atmosphere surrounding the falls, which presents an excellent opportunity for some fantastic photography. Once you’ve finished at the falls, it’s time to head over to Nguom Ngao Cave, for a very different, but no less impressive natural wonder. The cave stretches for 2,144 meters underground and is brimming with incredible stalactites and stalagmites. You will then return to Cao Bang town and head down the “snake pass” to Ba Be Lake, where you will stay overnight in a homestay constructed in traditional Tay fashion and owned and operated by a local Tay family. Here you can relax and unwind from the day and enjoy a delicious and authentic home-cooked meal.

After breakfast we’ll kick the final day of the tour of by boarding a boat and setting off onto the lake. It’s up to you how to spend your time on the boat, whether it’s relaxing and enjoying the views or going for a swim in the cool waters to refresh yourself. The views consist of stunning karst formations all around you covered with patches of wild vegetation and a rich wildlife. The boat will then continue along the Nang River, giving you a chance to explore the caves of Puong Grotto where you can marvel at the stalactites and stalagmites created through river erosion, as well as observe the thousands-strong bat colony that lives here. Now that you’ve reached the end of your tour, you’ll be driven the roughly 230 kilometres back to Hanoi, with a stop at a tea plantation nestled among rolling hills. Once we arrive in Hanoi it is time to say farewell, having made lifelong memories and connections.