Ha Giang jeep tour review (is it better than easy rider?)

Most people picture a Ha Giang jeep tour as the old army jeep from the photos, canvas rolled back and a valley behind it. You can still book that. A lot of what gets sold as a jeep now, though, is a new Jeep Wrangler that takes its roof off in the sun and puts it back on, air conditioning running, when it rains, and a few companies use the word for a seven-seat SUV because jeep is what people search for.

All three drive the same loop as the easy riders and sleep in the same homestays, give or take Du Gia, which I’ll come back to.

I ride the loop on my own bike most years, and for most first-timers I’d still say easy rider. I suggest the jeep a lot more often than I used to, though, and that’s mostly down to the Wrangler.

• Quick Answer: A Ha Giang jeep tour runs the same three or four-day loop as the easy rider tours, in an old open-air army jeep, a modern Jeep Wrangler with air conditioning, or a seven-seat SUV, with a driver and usually a guide. It’s the better choice with young children, for older travellers, in the June and July heat and in the May to September rain, while an easy rider still gives you more of the road itself, Ma Pi Leng especially. Expect about $230 a person with four sharing, $339 to $520 a person on a packaged jeep tour, or 9,000,000 VND to hire a jeep and driver for three days.
• The three vehicles sold as a jeep:
  • Old army jeep, usually a Soviet UAZ. Open, loud, dusty, no air conditioning, and the closest thing to being on a bike.
  • Modern open-air jeep, usually a Wrangler. Roof off in the sun, air conditioning on in the heat or rain. QT and Jasmine both run them.
  • SUV or seven-seater. What most Ha Giang loop car tours are. Best for five or six people.
• Seats, and where the guide goes:
  • A Wrangler has five seats, so three guests if the guide rides inside.
  • Some restored classic jeeps take three guests at most.
  • Loop Trails puts the guide on his own motorbike next to the jeep, and you can hop on the back for a stretch.
• Ha Giang jeep tour prices, 2026:
  • Jeep and driver hired locally: 7,000,000 VND for 2 days, 9,000,000 VND for 3, per vehicle.
  • Ha Giang Jeep Adventure: $339 (3 days) or $479 (4 days) a person in the new model, $398 or $520 in the army jeep.
  • QT’s private 4-day open-air jeep: from $630 a person.
  • Easy rider, to compare: $150 to $170 for 3 days, $190 to $230 for 4.
  • Extras: the Nho Que boat at 150,000 VND unless it’s included, and tips of $10 to $20 a day.
• Things to settle before paying:
  • Which vehicle, with a photo, written on the booking.
  • Whether the guide rides in the jeep, drives it, or follows on a bike.
  • Whether Du Gia is on the route. Cheaper car itineraries often drop it.
  • What time you’re back on the last day. The last comfortable Hanoi bus leaves around 4:30pm.
• Late October and November weekends: buckwheat season traffic hits cars hardest. Cars waited 30 to 60 minutes on the Tham Ma switchbacks last November.
• Companies I’d message:
  • Ha Giang Jeep Adventure, 63 Lê Hồng Phong. Army and new model jeeps.
  • QT Motorbikes and Tours, Lâm Đồng. Modern open-air jeep with air conditioning.
  • Mr Hung Tourism, 31 Nguyễn Văn Cừ. Private car tours.
  • Loop Trails Hostel, 54a Trần Phú. Guide on a bike beside the jeep.
  • Jasmine Tours, 22 Ngõ Phất Lộc, Hanoi. Bus from Hanoi included.

You’ll notice I’ve linked to a few hotels and activities I used or recommend, you can even highlight any text to check prices and book instantly. If you make a booking through them, I receive a small commission, which really helps support the work I do here, at no additional cost to you.

Is a Ha Giang Jeep Tour Better Than an Easy Rider?

It’s more comfortable and it keeps you dry, and it’s worse at the thing most people come up here for, which is being out on that road with nothing around you.

The views don’t change. Jeeps and easy rider convoys pull into the same lay-bys at Quan Ba and Tham Ma, everyone photographs the same two hills, and at dinner the jeep people are usually at the next table.

What changes is the bit between the stops, which is most of what people talk about afterwards, and from a jeep you see all of it and feel a good deal less. Ma Pi Leng is where that shows most.

A few companies have a way round this. The guide rides his own motorbike alongside the jeep and, if you ask, takes you on the back for a stretch, so you can do Ma Pi Leng on two wheels and the long afternoon in the car. Loop Trails works like that, and it changes how many of you fit in the jeep, which is further down.

The jeep is the better trip with young children, for anyone who’d find four days pillion hard going, in the June and July heat, and from May to September when it rains most afternoons.

Doing the Ha Giang loop without a motorbike needs no licence, and the three ways of doing it are side by side in the Ha Giang Loop guide. It also costs more, roughly double an easy rider for a couple and less than that once four of you share, and the numbers are in the price section.

What Kind of Jeep You Get on a Ha Giang Loop Jeep Tour

The old army jeep is usually a Russian UAZ, which people here call a U-oát, and you sit up high in the back with the canvas off, as close to the bike as four wheels get.

It’s noisy and it’s dusty and there’s no air conditioning, and on a December morning at 1,500 metres the back of an open UAZ is colder than most people pack for, so the gloves I’d take on the bike go in the bag either way.

Oddly, it’s the dearer of the two at Ha Giang Jeep Adventure, $398 a head for three days against $339 for their new model.

The modern open-air jeep is the one that’s changed things. QT runs its private four-day tour in one now, and Jasmine’s jeep tours are Wranglers.

The roof comes off for Ma Pi Leng and goes back on, air conditioning running, when it rains or the valley floor gets to 35 degrees, and it’s what I’d book for June or July.

QT’s own listing still says it isn’t suitable for people with back problems, which is fair, since new suspension doesn’t do much about four days of switchbacks.

The SUV is what most Ha Giang loop car tours actually are, a seven-seater with a driver who also guides, and a few of the private ones now use VinFast electric SUVs. It’s the one I find hardest to get excited about. For five or six people, or a family with a baby, it’s still the sensible choice, and usually cheaper per head than two jeeps.

Whichever you pick, I’d get the vehicle type written on the booking, with a photo, because in a busy week companies do move people between vehicles.

How Many People Fit in a Jeep, and Where the Guide Sits

Five seats in a Wrangler. Take out the driver and the guide and there are three left for you.

The old jeeps come out about the same, three or four guests, and some of the restored classics take three at most. So for four friends, whether you’re paying for one vehicle or two comes down to where the guide sits, and I’d ask that before I asked the price.

There are three answers

• The guide is also the driver, which keeps a seat free and costs you some of the conversation, because he’s watching a mountain road.
• The guide is a separate person in the front seat, which suits three of you and squeezes four.
• Or the guide follows on his own motorbike, the Loop Trails way, which frees the seat and gives you that swap onto his bike.

The last one is my favourite. One company running restored classic jeeps says outright that it can’t promise a separate guide at all, which is honest of them and a good reason to ask everybody else.

The April 2026 rules that put a carded guide with every group were written for motorbike tours, so on a jeep it’s still down to the company. Five or six of you is a seven-seater.

Ha Giang Jeep Tour Price in 2026

Some jeep prices are per person and some are for the whole vehicle, and the listings don’t always say which, so that’s the first thing to settle when two quotes look miles apart.

The cheapest line is a bare Ha Giang jeep rental with a driver, which covers the jeep, the driver and the fuel. Food, beds and tickets are extra, and the three-day route quoted at 9,000,000 VND runs from Meo Vac straight back to Ha Giang city with no Du Gia.

I used to tell people the jeeps do exactly the loop the bikes do. They mostly do, but the cheaper car itineraries are the ones most likely to drop Du Gia and go home the way they came, and Du Gia is the quietest and probably the nicest part of the trip, so I check for it by name now.

Packaged tours cover homestays, meals, the border permit and entrance tickets. The Nho Que boat is 150,000 VND a head. QT’s four-day jeep and Jasmine’s packages include it, and a bare rental doesn’t. The boat itself is in the Nho Que river boat ride.

At the top end, a private five-day trip for two, with Hoang Su Phi and Bac Ha added and the transfers from Hanoi included, has come in at around $750 a head. The walking side of that is in the Hoang Su Phi trekking guide, and bike tour prices to set against all this are in my Ha Giang Loop motorcycle tour review.

Ha Giang Jeep Tour From Hanoi, and the Last Afternoon

Four in the afternoon is roughly when QT’s four-day jeep gets you back to Ha Giang city, and the last comfortable bus to Hanoi goes at around half four.

That half hour works if nothing happens on the last day, and on this road something often does. Jasmine gets round it with the 8pm night bus, or a night at their place and the 8:30 bus the next morning, and I’d agree one or the other with any company before paying.

Why that bus shapes the whole last day is in the Ha Giang Loop itinerary, and the bus companies are in Hanoi to Ha Giang by sleeper bus.

The alternative is a car that comes up from Hanoi and takes you back down, which spares you the night bus both ways and is the one real head start a car tour has over a bike tour.

It’s six or seven hours each way, though, so I’d look at where the drive home sits in the schedule. OHC Travel’s three-day car tour, for one, runs Dong Van to Meo Vac and all the way back to Hanoi on day three, 490km in a single day.

Buckwheat Season Weekends by Car

If your dates land on a weekend between late October and the end of November, the jeep has a problem the bikes mostly don’t.

That’s buckwheat season, when Vietnamese visitors drive up in cars and coaches, mostly on sunny weekends, while foreign travellers come through fairly evenly all week

Last November our cars were waiting 30 minutes to an hour on the Tham Ma switchbacks, one guide’s group needed nearly two hours for the 20km from Yen Minh to Quan Ba, the road down to the Nho Que boat jammed, and during the festival at the end of the month Lung Cu stopped vehicles taking visitors up to the flag tower.

So I’d take back a little of what I said further up about jeeps pulling in wherever the bikes do. On those weekends a bike filters through and a jeep sits in the queue.

With a weekend in that window I’d ask for the Tham Ma and Lung Cu day to fall on a weekday, or go round clockwise, against the flow. The months are laid out in the best time to visit guide.

Ha Giang Jeep Adventure, QT and the Others

Ha Giang Jeep Adventure

• 63 Lê Hồng Phong, Ha Giang city
• 4.9 on Google, 171 ratings, open 24 hours

The name most people find first, and a real jeep specialist, with army jeeps and the new model and trips from two days up to ten with Cao Bang and Ba Be. The three and four-day tours come with a driver and a separate guide.

Their WhatsApp number, +84 867 090 477, is also the number for Authentic Ha Giang at 40 Lâm Đồng (4.9, 376 ratings), so if you’ve been messaging both, it’s one company.

QT Motorbikes and Tours

• Lâm Đồng, Ha Giang city
• 4.9, 4,891 ratings, open 7:30am to 8:30pm

A big motorbike operator whose private jeep tour now runs in a modern open-air jeep with air conditioning.

The four days come with an English-speaking guide and a separate driver, private rooms, all meals, the permit, entrance tickets and the Nho Que boat, from $630 a person, and you’re back in Ha Giang city around 4pm on the last day. It’s 4.9 on GetYourGuide, 17 ratings, and it’s the one I’d book for a summer trip.

Mr Hung Tourism

• 31 Nguyễn Văn Cừ.
• 5.0, 2,421 ratings, open 24 hours

More cars than jeeps. Every car tour is private and follows the same route as their bike tours, meals, rooms and tickets included, and the guide often drives. It’s who I’d point a family towards.

Loop Trails Hostel

• 54a Trần Phú
• 5.0, 177 ratings, open 24 hours.

Smaller and newer, and the one with the guide on a motorbike beside the jeep. They’ll mix a group, a couple in the jeep and their friends on bikes, and they run a five-day Ha Giang and Cao Bang jeep trip they’ve done with families.

Jasmine Tours

• 22 Ngõ Phất Lộc, Hanoi
• 4.9, 1,881 ratings, open 9am to 9pm

The easiest to book from Hanoi. Wranglers, the VIP bus both ways, a free private room at their place the night before and after, private rooms at the homestays and the boat included. The Hanoi pickup runs late often enough that I wouldn’t plan anything for that evening.

Doing the Ha Giang Loop by Car: FAQ

Can you do the Ha Giang Loop by car? Yes. QL4C is sealed all the way round, and jeeps, SUVs and minibuses all drive it. The Ma Pi Leng skywalk is walkers only, so that bit’s on foot however you arrived.

How many days is a Ha Giang jeep tour? Three is standard. Four gets you Lung Cu and Du Gia without rushing, and it’s what I’d book, same as on a bike.

Do I need a licence? No. You’re a passenger.

Is a jeep tour in Ha Giang safer than an easy rider? Safer, and not risk-free. The driver matters more than the vehicle, and some car tours sold online are sold by one company and driven by another, so I’d ask who’s actually at the wheel.

Will I get car sick? Possibly, and far more than on a bike. It happens on the switchbacks, Tham Ma and the long drop towards Meo Vac. Tablets taken before you set off help, and so does the front seat.

Can you do it with kids? Yes, and it’s the reason a lot of families book a jeep. Car seats are something to ask about early.

How much do you tip a jeep driver and guide? $10 to $20 a day, split between them.

Can you add Cao Bang? Yes. A Ha Giang and Cao Bang jeep tour runs five days with Ban Gioc waterfall, and most of the jeep companies sell it as one trip.

A Jeep for an Afternoon

You don’t have to book a jeep for the whole loop. Ha Giang Jeep Adventure also runs shorter trips from Ha Giang City, including a few hours around the nearby villages and rice terraces.

That can be a good option if you arrive a day early, want a break from the motorbike, or simply want to see what an open jeep feels like before committing to three or four days.

For me, an easy rider still gives you more of the Ha Giang Loop itself, but I can see why more people are choosing jeeps now, especially the newer open-air ones. They make the trip much easier in bad weather, in the summer heat, or if spending several days on the back of a bike just doesn’t sound enjoyable.

If you’ve done the loop by jeep, I’d be interested to know which type you used, the old army jeep, a Wrangler or a normal SUV, and whether you felt like you missed much compared with doing it on a bike.

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