This 5-day adventure aims to show you the most beautiful route in north Vietnam: a journey from Yen Bai to Sapa. It covers the least-visited, but most stunning destinations of the region including Tu Le, Mu Cang Chai, Sapa. You will also be able to interact with the local people inhabiting the area and observe the peculiarities of local life. The tour promises 5 days of exciting and memorable experience.
Note: This tour is customizable. Contact us to have it tailor-made to suit your expectation if necessary.
You will leave Hanoi from the Old Quarter and travel for about 2 hours to Duong Lam, an ancient village which has been recognized as a cultural and historical site in need of protection by UNESCO since 2006. The houses here date back 100-400 years and are surrounded by temples and gardens that were built in honour of two kings who became renowned national heroes by repelling a Chinese invasion roughly 1200 years ago. Here you will spend 2-4 hours exploring the village and taking in the sights before being served lunch at a local restaurant.
Continuing with your tour, you will be driven through the rural countryside, slowly moving from flat landscapes littered with rice paddies to giant karst formations surrounded by tea and maize plantations as you gain altitude. Eventually you will reach the village of Nghia Lo, where you will stay the night in a traditional White Thai homestay built on stilts.
– Includes a 2-4 hour flat walk in the ancient village.
You will rise early and go on a bicycle ride amongst the paddy fields, basking in the peaceful morning ambience. The mornings begin early for the villagers who can be seen quietly working in the fields surrounded by ducks, chickens, pigs and buffalos.
Breakfast will then be served in the open air overlooking the fields before you check out and set off over the dramatic Khau Pha Mountain Pass. The rice fields of Tu Le along the way are spectacular and will fill you with wonder.
After lunch in a local restaurant, you will continue your drive to Nam Co Village where you will get to see the Flower H’mong ethnic minority wearing their colourful traditional costumes. If your trip falls on the correct day, we will also take you for a visit to the fascinating local market.
Finally, we will drive you to La Pan Tan and Mam Soi where you can enjoy a short walk up the hill and be rewarded with beautiful views of the surrounding rice fields before heading back down to Kim Noi village and overnighting at a local Thai Homestay run by the lovely Mrs. Chon.
– Includes a 5-7 km trek.
After breakfast in the homestay, a local guide will collect you for the longest trek of the tour, from Kim Noi Village to Hang Dang De then to Che Cu Nha. You will enjoy a picnic lunch on the rice terraces and then continue to La Pan Tan where you will be picked up and driven back for a second night at Mrs. Chon’s homestay.
– Includes a 15-17 km trek.
After breakfast, you will drive from Mu Cang Chai through Tan Uyen and then on to Sapa. The road is very dramatic with many winding hairpin bends each opening up a new vista of the mountains. You will cross the Sin Ho Pass before arriving in Sapa where you will have lunch and the chance to explore the town.
Then you will trek to Giang Ta Chai Village, where you will have dinner and stay overnight in a Dao ethnic house.
– Includes a 4-6 Km trek.
You will begin the day with a 3km trek through the breath-taking landscape of Sapa to the village of Suoi Ho, home to a H’mong community. From here you can enjoy views over endless rice terraces, and as you walk through the homesteads, you will be surrounded by free-roaming piglets and chickens.
You will then travel back to Sapa town for lunch. After lunch, we return to Hanoi, still traveling through magnificent scenery, mountainous at first but descending to the areas of tea plantations and then gradually flattening out to rice paddies. You will arrive back in Hanoi in the late afternoon.
This trip is organized for private group only. The tariff depends on the number of participants and the tourist season of the year. Please send us an enquiry to get the price of your group and your travel date.
Note: Please note that due to cost efficiency, we only organize tour for at least two people.
Destination | Acommodation | Nights |
---|---|---|
Nghia Lo | Mrs. Chinh's Homestay | 1 |
Mu Cang Chai | Mrs. Chon Homestay | 2 |
Giang Ta Chai (Sapa) | Mr. Cuong Homestay | 1 |
Just complete and send the reservation form on our website, making sure that you have given us your e-mail address and phone number. As soon as we receive your request we will contact you to confirm the reservation. It is our policy to reply to all requests within 24 hours.
Almost all of our tours are daily departure. To make a booking, you must submit a reservation form. Then we process the booking and reply to you within 24 hours.
You can reserve by phone or WhatsApp: You can call our 24/7 call center hotline at + 84 343 470 507 (also available on WhatsApp)
Yes, of course if you would like to make a reservation directly with the tour operator or travel agent, you will need to contact them directly. However, we are in good position to make the offer, make the booking and run the trip as we are a local tour operator.
You will be notified via an e-mail (within 24 hours after placing your order) and we will do our best to suggest or book an alternative similar hotel based on your preferences and our experience.
We can only guarantee bookings made at least 3-working days (not including Sun & Public holidays) before the departure date.
You can book as far as 24 months in advance, but please ensure you remember you have made the reservation. We will charge 30% of total rate is required upon the confirmation of services require full payment 60 days before departure.
You can expect to receive the invoice as a reminder well in advance of your trip.
To complete a reservation for someone else, simply type in his or her name instead of yours for guest name. Don’t forget to use your email address to receive your confirmation information.
Please inform us and the hotel immediately as any changes or fee will depend on the hotel policy. We will also try our best to offer you similar ground services.
Making an online reservation is easy and safe. Just complete the secure reservations form (SSL – 128bit), making sure that you give us your e-mail address. As soon as we receive your request we will reply within 24 hours.
Every booking with us will add 1$ US to our humanitarian project to help increase development capacity for ethnic groups in northern Vietnam. At the meantime, we are focusing on helping children in remote mountainous villages in Vietnam, major destinations of our tours.
As travelers, you can join us too. Donations of unwanted clothes, books and toys are welcome and warmly appreciated. You can also take part in our regular mission trips to these hill tribal communities.
We booked an eight days Northern Vietnam tour with The Terrible Tour Guide Travel. I was so pleased with Huey. He was very friendly, helpful and informative. I really enjoyed the view in Mu Cang Chai. We saw scenic & huge terraced paddies fields with yellow colors in harvest season, it created a gorgeous senses. The landscape was so fascinating. Thank u so much Huey took us on an amazing tour through the local villages in MCC & Sapa. Huey was the best tour guide I ‘ ve had. I highly recommend this company.
My Wife and I spent 5 really enjoyable days on a road trip from Hanoi to Sapa via Mu Cang Chai with The Terrible Tour Guide.
TTG did a great job of giving us an experience we’ll never forget. Right from the first email, Joey was extremely responsive and tailored a tour to our needs, even suggesting a couple of different itineraries when we were undecided. Once we got there, our friendly guide Huy made sure that everything we needed was taken care of.
The only issue along the way was a mix-up with our accommodation booking at Mu Cang Chai, which I can only assume was because TTG didn’t double check the booking with the property. At the last minute, we were moved to a homestay which hadn’t even opened properly yet, and as a result they were pretty much learning things on the go when we stayed there. Just a little more attention to detail would have made this trip perfect.
The reason I’m still giving this a 5/5 rating is down to our guide Huy. He made up for everything with his positivity and can-do attitude, turning even the most inconvenient situations into fun experiences. This was particularly true when we had the accommodation problem in Mu Cang Chai. Huy jumped on a scooter and raced around town looking for accommodation for us. Then again the next day when our trek looked like it may be cancelled due to the rain, Huy took us into town to buy raincoats so we could keep to our schedule. I’m glad he did, because we ended up having the most incredible trek of our trip.
I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending The Terrible Tour Guide Travel to anyone looking to do a tour of Vietnam. They’re specialists in giving you that off-the-beaten-path experience, avoiding major tourist hotspots and crowds. During the majority of our trip, we were pretty much the only foreigners in most places we visited. If you can, ask to do a tour with Huy cause I guarantee that he’ll make your holiday just a bit more special.