Hanoi Countryside Bike Tour: Long Bien Bridge, Bonsai & Co Loa

4.96

(310 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

The first sound that stuck with me was the clatter of bikes on the old iron ribs of Long Bien Bridge — it’s louder than you’d think, kind of echoing under your wheels. Our guide, Minh, grinned at my nervous face and said something about “the heartbeat of Hanoi.” I didn’t expect to see so many farmers below, tiny dots moving between green patches by the Red River. The city feels close but also far away up there.

We coasted down into the countryside and suddenly everything changed — the air smelled like wet earth and a little bit of smoke from someone burning leaves. Minh waved at a woman selling sugarcane juice in plastic cups near a lotus lake; we stopped for a drink (it’s cold and sweet, almost grassy). At one point he took us to a family’s bonsai garden — the owner showed us how he trims roots with these tiny scissors. He laughed when I tried to say “bonsai” in Vietnamese. I probably butchered it but he just smiled and poured more tea.

The cycling itself wasn’t hard, mostly flat dirt roads past vegetable plots and kids waving from doorways. We rolled through a wet market where a woman handed me a slice of jackfruit without asking — sticky fingers for the next kilometer. Later at Co Loa Citadel, Minh told stories about ancient kings fighting invaders here; I couldn’t picture battles in such quiet fields but maybe that’s just how history fades. Lunch was simple rice and pork at some roadside place (good though), then egg coffee in a tiny cup that tasted like dessert and caffeine had a baby.

I still think about that bridge sometimes — how it rattled under us, how everyone seemed to know each other along these backroads. If you’re looking for a day trip from Hanoi that isn’t all temples or traffic, this bicycle tour is something different. Not perfect or fancy but real — you know?