Tam Coc is a popular tourist destination in Vietnam’s north and many people visit here throughout the year for the famous boat ride. It’s a pleasant, two-hour journey where a local man or woman rows small groups of tourists down the Ngo Dong river with his or her feet.
The major draw card of the ride, other than the foot rowing, is seeing the beautiful landscape – a glass-top river enveloped by large karst topographies.
Tam Coc means ‘three caves’ and the boat ride lives up to this name.
Tourists are rowed through low-roofed dark caves during the journey, with the longest cave stretching 125 metres.
The rower is often a Vietnamese woman who does back-to-back shifts of the seven-kilometre rowing journey throughout the day.