Product Description
Cycling Northern Vietnam 4 Day Itinerary takes you to Mai Chau, Pu Luong and Tam Coc where you visit peaceful rural villages and meet up with local friendly Thai, Muong people. This is another easy road bike ride offering about 40 km cycling per day.
Map of Cycling Northern Vietnam
Day-To-Day Itinerary
Day 1: Hanoi – Mai Chau.
7:30 am you will be met up with Lotussia Travel team at your hotel in Hanoi and transferred to Hoa Binh province (to our biking start point) where you start cycling on the back road. It is nice and peaceful countryside view. After your first bike ride, you will arrive in Cun hill where you will be picked up again by your vehicle and transferred to a local restaurant for lunch. After lunch, you will be taken to Ba Kan village for the second bike ride of the day. The afternoon ride is through the village of the Muong people in the vallage floor and along the Da river reservoir. It s back road with view of the village and water. Late of the day, you arrive in a village of the Thai People. Check into a local stilt house for dinner and overnight.
Day 2: Mai Chau – Pu Luong Nature Reserve.
Pu Luong Nature Reserve is situated in Quan Hoa and Ba Thuoc districts of Thanh Hoa Province, North Central Coast region of Vietnam. The reserve is located along two parallel mountain ridges, that run from north-west to south-east, and are divided by a central valley, which contains several human settlements and a large agricultural land area, therefore, is not included within the nature reserve. Pu Luong is endowed with great biodiversity, its flora and fauna is closely associsted with the Cuc Phuong National Park 25 km south-east. After breakfast and farewel to the host, you cycle to Pu Luong Nature Reserve. You cycle on a dirt road through local Thai and Muong villges. Stops may be made en route for you to take picture and to visit local homes. Then go on cycling on the Road 15C untill you get to a Thai village where a stop will be made for lunch. The afternoon is free for walking around this village. You will meet up with local villagers. Chatting with them will help you to understand more their culture and the way of living. Dinner and overnight in a local stilt house.
Day 3: Pu Luong – Tam Coc.
After breakfast, you leave the village biking on a dirt roads with fews up and downhill rides. You then pedal on the Ho Chi Minh trail. It is an easy ride today with scenic highway. When you get to the left turn, you will get the transfer to Tam Coc. Arrive in Tam Coc around late afternoon. Check into a local hotel for overnight.
Day 4: Tam Coc – Hanoi.
After breakfast, you will get on board for a 2-hour boat ride on the Ngo Dong river, Tam Coc to enjoy the “Halong bay on land” and go through 3 caves. The boat trip finish after 1,5 hours. You will disembark the sampan and continue cycling through local countryside villages, rice fields to Hoa Lu ancient capital. You cycle on a paved, flat roads til you reach the the ancient city of Hoa Lu since 9th century, where the remarkable remnants are King Dinh and Le Temple. Lunch will be provided in a local restaurant. After lunch, it is possible for you to enjoy some more ride until you reach the Highway 1 where you finish cycling and get picked up by your vehicle for the journey back to Hanoi. Upon arrival, you will be dropped off at your hotel in Hanoi. Trip ends.
Vietnam private tours
Lotussia Travel is a Hanoi tour operator offering a wide selection of multi-activity holidays in Vietnam. Options include countryside cycle, mountain biking, road cycling, jungle trek, trekking homestay, mountain hiking, peaks climbs, motorbike, scouter touring, camping, caving expeditions, kayaking, boat trips, cruise, sightseeing, culture tours. Most of our trips are private customized, and specially designed for small group tours, family vacations. The itinerary above – Cycling Northern Vietnam is only a sample that can be further customized to better fit your requirements. Just follow it or contact us for designing your perfect adventure.
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Itinerary disclaimer
Occasionally our tour itineraries are updated during the year to incorporate improvements stemming from past travelers’ comments and our own research. The information given in this itinerary may be slightly different to that in the service proposal. It’s very important that you print and review a final copy of your itinerary a couple of days prior to travel, in case there have been changes that affect your plans. If you have any queries, please contact us. We are here to help you!
Please note that while we operate successful trips in Vietnam throughout the year, some changes may occur in our itineraries due to inclement weather and common seasonal changes to timetables and transport routes. This can happen with little notice so please be prepared for modifications to the route. The order and timing of included activities in each location may also vary from time to time.
Inclusions
Depending on the proposed option (semi-guide tour or all-inclusive package tour), the price may include the following services. Please bear in mind Lotussia Travel is specialized in tailor-made trips. Trip cost vary depending on group size and other details.
- Car transfers.
- Local tour guide. The English-Speaking guide is provided by default. Other language may be available upon request (with extra charge).
- Meals.
- Entrance fees.
Exclusions
Unless required most of the following services are usually not included in our tour price.
- Visa
- Flight/Train tickets.
- Accommodation.
- Tour leader.
- Local porter(s).
- International travel insurance.
- Drinks.
- Tips.
- Personal expenses.
Tour guide
Our tour guides speak English or French. They hold a university degree in tourism and national license as a guide. If you wish to send a tour leader along with any group, he or she can fully rely on the knowledge and experience of our local guides.
Remote treks are always accompanied by a local representative to deal with permits and authorities and manage the porter team. They speak the local dialects, know the cultural traditions and give tips on suggested behavior in fragile ecological areas and tribal communities. For some itineraries, the role of tour leader and representative is combined.
Driver
Our drivers don’t speak English. It’s possible that a few of them might know some basic words, such as telling time, stop, and lunch. If you’re looking for effective communication throughout the journey, we highly recommend booking a tour guide.
Trip routes
Principally, Lotussia Travel requires all the trip associates to know the destinations well by any means of traveling or enquiry to the local suppliers to figure out all the relative details of any trip. For adventure tours such as jungle trekking, mountain hiking, sea kayaking, river rafting or biking, cycling tours, Lotussia Travel will never add any new routes into available schedule until survey or pre-view it.
Accommodation
Lotussia Travel carefully choose all the hotels, guest-houses or home-stays based on service quality, location, and characteristics, doing best to make the accommodations in the remote small places as comfortable as possible. Please bear in mind that hotels in Vietnam might not be in the same standard in other country. Generally hotels in major cities such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh city, Hoian, Hue…are much better than hotels and guest-houses in mountainous areas.
Meals
Lotussia Travel take dinning as an indispensable experience to clients since it is an important part in Vietnamese culture. Therefore, Lotussia Travel will not intend take clients to the most expensive restaurants but non-touristy local ones which offer delicious, local food, with nice or interesting atmosphere. The restaurants might be simple in the country but LOTUSSIA Travel guarantee is sanitary and cleanliness. Or even on our trek, we encourage our cook offer client food with new tastes from day to day. During adventure itineraries to mountainous or remote areas, there is sometimes no choice for hotel and restaurants. We will try our best to bring you the best taste of local food.
Drinks
As the tap water in Vietnam is undrinkable, Lotussia Travel recommend clients to drink bottled water throughout your trip, or boiled water on treks. Lotussia Travel offers bottle water all the day, and soft drinks like Cola, Sprite or Vietnamese Tea or if possible juice in restaurants (if mentionned in itinerary). This is not automatically included in the packages. In simple restaurant or on camping, Lotussia Travel offers boiled water, instant coffee or juice, wrapped milk (Details are confirmed in bottom of your itinerary).
Transportation
In most destinations of Vietnam, all the roads are well paved though the traffic is quite messed up like in Hanoi, Hai Phong… We use proper vehicles, car, minibus or coach in good condition based on the size of the groups. We use 4WD only on the rough road where the other vehicles could not pass through or based on clients requirement on overland journeys or treks. For cycling itineraries, we usually use our support minibus or minibus with support truck. For sea kayaking, river rafting trips, diving packages we use standard boat as support. Detailed information is provided on our service proposal.
We use drivers who are native or local of each travel destination and maintain good safety records for all trips. Most of our drivers can speak English but a little bit. This is just enough to understand basic words such as “time of departure”, “stop”, “restaurants”, “hotels”…If you want to learn more about Vietnamese culture and information about sightseeing sites, booking a tour guide is highly recommended.
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