Second time going to Ninh Binh, decided to try out a new car company. Driver came on time, drove safely, was very communicative on WhatsApp (English), and flexible with our itinerary. Car was also clean and comfortable. We did however ask our driver to take us somewhere for lunch, and were taken to a restaurant with overpriced but poor food. Do your research in advance and choose your own lunch spot ????
We booked a day trip to Ninh Binh and were quite disappointed in the service we got, which is surprising given all of the other tripadvisor ratings. Maybe we got unlucky with the driver, as they have several drivers it seems.
The positives is that the person we interacted with on email was quite professional and offered us flexibility in the stops we had. The price was also one of the lowest from 5 different companies we emailed, but not by a significant margin to make a difference. The driver was punctual and arrives early to our hotel, and we got to see all the sites we wanted to see, even squeezing in an extra one beyond the standard itinerary. Ninh Binh itself is really stunning and the landscape was extremely impressive.
In terms of negatives, firstly, the driver did not speak english, which is not what we expected given we were booking with a tour agency company, so were not told anything about the sites we visited and communicating about waiting times, etc. was hard.
Secondly, after dropping us off at Tam Coc for the boat ride we asked for the driver to meet us in 1 hour or so when we return. We got back after just over an hour and he wasn’t there. We found wifi in a cafe to whatsapp / call him but no response. 30 minutes later he arrives telling us he fell asleep, which he seemed to think was funny.
We asked in advance to be taken for a good lunch that they recommend with the traditional local goat dishes. He drove us to a restaurant (A Phao) where unsurprisingly it turned out the waiter was his friend and we had only just gotten out of the car, when the waiter right in front of us hands him some money laughing, which I assume is the driver’s cut for bringing us to the restaurant. Whilst that is to be expected, it can be done a lot more subtly and not in full view of the customer. Furthermore the restaurant then overcharged us more at the end, saying the prices on the menu were old (the menu showed the mains we chose as 200k but we were charged 300k) - we were not told this in advance, we tried to argue but was pointless. Service was very unprofessional with the waiter snorting and sneezing right next to us as ordered. However the food was quite good and the only saving grace of the experience.
We were then taken to the wrong destination which was not on the route we had agreed, having asked for Bai Dinh and instead being taken to Trang An. When we came back to where the driver was, he was on his mobile playing games. As we told him this is not where we asked to go, he seemed uninterested and just walked us back to the car whilst continuing to play the game on his phone.
Lastly, the driving to and from Hanoi was quite erratic - lots of honking, aggressive lane changing and overtaking. We’ve driven a lot in Vietnam and whilst not as safe as in Europe, its generally been fine, but here for the first time it felt the driving was unnecessarily aggressive, not to mention headaches we both got from constant honking to overtake other vehicles.
The driver struck us as relatively young, probably early 20s, so likely lacks experience or proper training on how to behave, and this is not entirely his fault. However it would be good for the company to provide him with the training required to drive people around professionally, which is why we wrote all this details from our experience so that it can be corrected for future travellers. We have hired dozens of private drivers in south east asia for day trips and this ranks amongst the most disappointing experiences.
I had a great experience today with Hanoi Booking car. My driver was Li and he was super nice and kind from the very moment he came to meet me at the airport. He drove me around very patiently based on a very ad-hoc itinerary agreed with his brother Hoang (which made this organisation so smooth - thank you!!).
The car was very comfortable and Li had plenty of bottles of water for the day. He took me to places and negotiated prices for my purchases as well as my entry tickets to main attractions in Ninh Binh. He had some very nice advice for sightseeing and restaurants, which were greatly appreciated. His and Hoang’s English were really good and communication was very smooth. I would definitively book them again should I come back to Hanoi and surely recommend them to a friend/colleague.