Before you Trekking

We booked your Hoa Lu- Tam Coc tour from the Hotel in Hanoi on July 23rd. We booked through Lotussia Travel but there appear to be many companies doing this tour and the situation/ conditions etc must be very much the same.

Our Tour Guide was a Mr.Dang". He was entertaining and professional and very good tour guide. Excellent rating for him He did his best to help us out but we had a serious problem.

Briefly: We decided to take the bicycle option on this tour. Mr.Dang showed us where to get our bicycles and our group was told to "catch up" with a group that was way ahead of us down the road. There was a "local guide" with that group who we never did see. Another local guide was supposed to follow us to make sure we were OK. He never followed.

We lost sight of the main group in the first 3 km or so. We had some bicycle problems and we stopped once to take a photo. We got to a large pond and canoe place after about 4 km and we saw no tour van and no guide. We bicycled a little more and realized we had no idea where to go or how far to go so we came back to the big canoe place and waited. We finally borrowed a cell phone and called our hotel to tell them we were lost and left behind. We were a bit worried and very disappointed . . . and we spent almost two hours by the side of the road waiting for help.

Finally Mr. Dang arrived to pick us up with our bicycles and we rejoined the tour. We were the last people to eat and we had to cut our canoe trip short. The rest of the tour group were not happy about this.

IF YOU GO: ( and you really should. The scenery is AMAZING and the overall experience well worth a bit of discomfort. Restaurant meal was the best I had in Vietnam!!)

1. Check on the vehicle your Tour company will use. The trip to Hoa-Lu/Tam COc is a bumpy TWO hours and our bus had small, cramped seats.
2. Ask for a printed itinerary. Our guide gave us a "then we will see, then we will see" etc etc but no times allowed for each stop. ( The souvenir shop/rest stop we made was pitiful. Dirty and old. ) And having a printed reference would add to the enjoyment of the trip . ."what was the name of that temple?"
3. If you bicycle, ask for a MAP and directions. We had none.
4. Realize that the boat paddlers are going to torment you with their t-shirts and other goods for sale. You are a captive audience and you cant leave the boat. They do this about half-way along.
5. The boat paddlers will also ASK YOU for a tip. The tour guide should tell you how much beforehand or you will get scolded by an irate boat person.


Overall . .the scenery was worth it. The canoe trip was world class. We really enjoyed the bicycle option too . . until we were abandoned. Our guide (Dang) was terrific . .funny and helpful and except for the bicycle snafu . .well organized.