Handpicked experience · Hanoi
Hanoi, Vietnam
A pagoda complex younger than most smartphones, and caves that people have lived in for thirty thousand years.
A great way to experience the beauty and beautifulness of nature.
Visit Bai Dinh pagoda.
Explore Vietnam's picturesque Bai Dinh, Trang An, Mua Cave with a convenient pick up from your hotel in Hanoi Old Quarter
Take a boat trip along Trang An tourist site.
Three sites in one day that have almost nothing in common
A cave temple a thousand years older than the complex beneath it
Caves lived in since before the last ice age ended
A boat route that goes through the rock rather than around it
An optional climb that pays for itself at the top
A twelve-hour day south of Hanoi covering three very different places in Ninh Binh: an enormous modern pagoda complex, a rowed boat route through flooded limestone caves, and a staircase up a hill for the view over everything.
It is worth knowing before you arrive that the vast Bai Dinh you walk through was built between 2003 and 2010. It is the largest pagoda complex in the country and it looks ancient, but the scale, the halls and the enormous bronze figures are all this century.
The old Bai Dinh is still there, up the hillside above it: a small cave temple around a thousand years old, reached by a separate path and quiet in a way the new complex never is. The corridors below are lined with hundreds of stone arhat figures, each one carved differently, running for well over a kilometre — a modern undertaking on a scale that few countries attempt any more.
Trang An is one of a small number of places in Asia listed by UNESCO for both its landscape and its human history, and the second half is the surprising one.
Excavation in these caves has found traces of people living here more or less continuously for around thirty thousand years — through the last glacial period, through the sea rising far inland and drowning the valleys, and through it retreating again. The same limestone that makes the scenery gave shelter that outlasted an ice age. You are rowed through the middle of one of the longest-occupied places in the region.
The sampans are rowed almost entirely by local women, many of them working a rota that shares the trips out fairly between the surrounding villages rather than letting the strongest or the pushiest take the most.
It is hard work, two hours or more with the arms and often the feet, and the rota is the reason your rower may have waited most of the day for your boat. Tipping is not obligatory and is not included in your booking, but it is customary and it matters here more than it does in a restaurant.
The boat is long and seated with little shade, so a hat and sunscreen do more for you than anything else you bring. Mua Cave is around five hundred uneven steps and is entirely optional — the view is the reward, but nobody minds if you sit it out at the bottom. Bai Dinh and the temples call for covered shoulders and knees.
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What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
The huge complex you walk through was built between 2003 and 2010. It is the largest in Vietnam and looks ancient, but the halls and bronzes are all this century.
Yes, up the hillside — a small cave pagoda around a thousand years old, on a separate path, and much quieter than the new complex below.
Hundreds of stone arhat figures, each carved differently, running for well over a kilometre. It is a modern commission at a scale few countries still attempt.
It is one of the few sites in Asia recognised for both landscape and human history, and the human half is the unexpected one.
Evidence of people living there more or less continuously for around thirty thousand years — through the last glacial period, through the sea flooding far inland, and through its retreat.
Local women, almost entirely, many working a rota that shares the trips fairly between the villages instead of leaving them to whoever pushes hardest.
It is not obligatory and not part of your booking, but it is customary. Two hours of rowing with arms and feet, after possibly waiting most of the day for your turn, is worth acknowledging.
No. It is around five hundred uneven steps and entirely optional — plenty of people wait at the bottom while the rest go up for the view.