Hanoi, Lan Ha Bay and Hoi An, seven days
Two nights in the Old Quarter, one aboard a small boat among limestone islands, then an hour and twenty minutes in the air to the central coast and three nights in Hoi An. Two regions, one flight, and three nights in one place at the end.
At a glance
- Duration
- 7 days, 6 nights
- Party size
- 2 to 8, private
- Starts
- Hanoi, Noi Bai airport
- Ends
- Hoi An, flying out of Da Nang, 30 km away
- Effort
- Easy — one ladder transfer to a kayak, one long travel day
- From
- USD 1,690 per person
Who this is for
Seven days, two regions, and one decision that shapes the whole trip: the last three nights are spent in a single town. Most week-long Vietnam itineraries move every evening and arrive home as a blur of hotel corridors. This one front-loads the movement — Hanoi, the bay, the flight — and then stops. Hoi An is small enough to walk across in twenty minutes and interesting enough to hold three days, and the beach is fifteen minutes away by bicycle.
One administrative note that most tour listings still have wrong: since the mergers of July 2025, Hoi An and the My Son sanctuary are part of Da Nang city, not Quang Nam province, which no longer exists as a separate unit. The old town, the ruins and the airport are now under a single administration. It changes nothing about the 30 km drive between them and quite a lot about permits, tickets and how an address is written.
Take this route if you want the north and the centre without the south, and if the idea of unpacking once appeals more than a fifth transfer. It suits couples, first-time visitors, and anyone with an interest in Cham brick architecture, tailoring or food, all of which Hoi An rewards. If you want the imperial city as well, the eight-day version adds Hue and the Hai Van pass. If you would rather see the far south than the centre, six days to Ho Chi Minh City does that in one day fewer. For all three regions, start at ten days.
Day by day
Arrive in Hanoi
You are met airside of the crowd — inside the Noi Bai arrivals hall, with a name board — and driven the 25 km into Hanoi over the Nhat Tan bridge, roughly 45 minutes outside the evening peak. The room is yours from midday. If the flight lands at five in the morning, we book the night before rather than have you wait on a sofa with your bags.
Land before 15:00 and the afternoon is usable on foot: Hoan Kiem lake, Ngoc Son temple on its island, and the hour and a half either side of sunset when the Old Quarter stops being a traffic problem and becomes several thousand people eating dinner on the pavement. Dinner is your own, with three suggestions from us at three price levels and a table booked if you want it.
A full day in Hanoi
Starting at 08:00 at the Temple of Literature, which is a different place before the coaches arrive around half past nine: foundations from the eleventh century, the stelae of the doctors carried on stone tortoises, and courtyards quiet enough to hear the birds in. The morning goes on to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum complex from the outside and the One Pillar Pagoda. The mausoleum closes for roughly two months a year for maintenance and we tell you which weeks before you book.
The afternoon is the Old Quarter properly: thirty-six streets each named for the guild that once worked it, the Long Bien bridge from the riverbank below, and egg coffee in a place that is not on the coach circuit. The water puppet theatre is offered rather than pushed — 50 minutes, a genuinely old form, and unmistakably a show for visitors. You can decide on the day and nobody will mind either way.
To the coast, and a night in Lan Ha Bay
Departure at 08:00: 170 km and two and a half to three hours to the coast, expressway for most of it, one stop chosen for clean lavatories rather than for the commission a showroom pays. Boarding is around midday and lunch is served as the boat clears the harbour.
Lan Ha sits at the southern end of the same limestone system as Ha Long, reached from Hai Phong, with around four hundred islands and a fishing population that still lives on the water. It carries a small share of the traffic that goes through the central channel, which is the reason we use it. The tender goes out for an hour of kayaking in a cove the boat can lie in, there is a swim if the sea is above 24 degrees, and you are on deck for the last of the light. Dinner aboard is a set seafood menu; allergies reach the galley in writing before you sail.
Off the water and south to the central coast
A travel day, described as one. Tai chi on the sun deck at 06:15 for anyone who wants it, a morning visit to a cave or a floating settlement depending on which route the bay authority has assigned that week, and disembarkation around 11:00. The pier to Noi Bai is 190 km and three and a half hours.
Hanoi to Da Nang is an hour and twenty minutes in the air. Add two hours at the airport before it and the 30 km, 45-minute drive from Da Nang down to Hoi An after, and the day runs to roughly eight hours from the gangway to the hotel door. Half a day disappears into a flight that looks like eighty minutes on a ticket, and we would rather write that here than have you discover it on Day 4. You arrive in Hoi An in the evening, and the old town is at its best after dark anyway, so the first walk through the lantern streets happens tonight if you have the energy for it.
Hoi An, slowly
The old town opens early and empties late, and the two hours after seven in the morning are the only time it belongs to the people who live there. We start then: the Japanese covered bridge, two of the assembly halls built by Chinese merchant communities, a family house that has been in the same hands for several generations, and the market on the riverbank while it is still trading fish rather than souvenirs. The town survived as a trading port because the Thu Bon river silted up and commerce moved to Da Nang, which is also why so little of it was rebuilt.
Afternoon at your own pace. Hoi An is a tailoring town — if you want something made, this is the day to be measured, because a fitting takes 24 hours and you have two left. Otherwise, the bicycle: it is 5 km of flat lanes through rice fields to An Bang beach, and the hotel bikes are free. Evening is the lantern-lit old town, which is crowded and worth it, and quieter after nine when the day trippers from Da Nang have gone.
My Son at first light, then the water villages
Leaving at 05:30 for My Son, about 40 km inland and an hour away. The point of the early start is not sunrise photography: the first tour buses reach the site at about half past eight and the valley is genuinely quiet before them, with mist still in the trees. The Cham built here from roughly the fourth to the thirteenth century, in brick laid without mortar that nobody has fully reproduced. Several groups were destroyed by bombing in 1969 and are left as they fell, which the site does not hide.
Back by late morning. The afternoon goes to the water villages east of town: Tra Que, where the growers raise herbs in sand fertilised with weed dragged out of the river, and where you can work a bed yourself if you want to, and Cam Thanh, where the nipa palm channels are worked from round basket boats. The basket boat trip has become a loud, spinning affair with music at the main landing; we use a quieter operator further along the water and go late in the afternoon. Optional cooking class in the same village, ending with dinner you cooked.
A last morning, then Da Nang
The transfer to Da Nang airport is 30 km and 45 minutes, and there is no earlier obligation than your flight. A morning at the beach, a last fitting at the tailor, or an hour in the old town while the shutters are still going up — all of them fit if your flight is after midday.
Da Nang connects to Hanoi in an hour and twenty and to Ho Chi Minh City in the same, along with a growing list of direct international routes to East Asia. If you are continuing to the south rather than flying home, tell us and we will extend the trip rather than end it here; if you are connecting internationally through Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City on the same day, leave at least three hours between the domestic arrival and the long-haul departure.
What it costs
| Party size | Comfortable | Excellent | Exceptional |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 travellers | USD 2,200 | USD 2,820 | USD 3,190 |
| 3 – 4 | USD 1,990 | USD 2,550 | USD 2,890 |
| 5 – 6 | USD 1,810 | USD 2,320 | USD 2,620 |
| 7 – 8 | USD 1,690 | USD 2,160 | USD 2,450 |
Three nights in one town is what keeps this trip cheaper than it looks. Hotels are billed by the night either way, but a vehicle and a driver are billed by the day wherever they are, and in Hoi An they cover 30 km on Day 4 and 90 km on Day 6 instead of a transfer every morning. The domestic flight sits inside every figure here, booked in economy on a full-service carrier with hold baggage rather than on a fare that charges extra for a suitcase.
Party size is the biggest lever in the table, as it is on every private trip: two people carry a whole guide and a whole vehicle between them, seven or eight carry the same two things, and the per-person figure falls by about a quarter across the four rows. The three columns change where you sleep and nothing else — the same guide, the same 05:30 start for My Son, the same boat programme. In Hoi An the gap between columns is wide, because a good old-town courtyard hotel and a beachfront resort at An Bang are different products. What a Vietnam trip costs shows the supplier arithmetic; how to book covers deposits and cancellation.
Included and not included
What the price includes
- Six nights: two in Hanoi, one aboard in Lan Ha Bay, three in Hoi An, in your class
- The Hanoi to Da Nang flight on Day 4, economy, hold baggage included
- Private air-conditioned vehicle and driver throughout, including both airport runs
- A private English-speaking guide on Days 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, local to each region
- All meals shown day by day: 6 breakfasts, 4 lunches, 1 dinner aboard
- Bay entry and route fees, kayak hire and cave tickets in Lan Ha
- Entries: Temple of Literature, the Hoi An old town ticket, My Son, Tra Que and the Cam Thanh basket boats
- Airport meet inside arrivals with a name board, and a 24-hour number answered by a person in Vietnam
What it does not include
- International flights — quoted at cost on request, never marked up
- Vietnam e-visa, USD 25 single entry, applied for at evisa.gov.vn
- Travel insurance, which we require you to hold and will ask to see
- Meals not listed: 2 lunches and 5 dinners across the seven days
- Tailoring, cooking classes, bicycles beyond the free hotel ones, and drinks
- Tips for guide and driver — customary, never included, never invoiced
Central Vietnam runs a flood season from September to December, with the peak in October and November, and it is not a matter of a wet afternoon. In 2025 the event ran from 16 October to 6 December; Bach Ma recorded 1,739.6 mm of rain in 24 hours on 26 and 27 October, a national record; at least 219 people died or went missing; and damage reached USD 129.7 million in Hue and USD 33.2 million in Da Nang. The Hoi An old town sits low against the Thu Bon and floods most years to some degree. If you are set on those two months we will take the booking, but you should hold insurance that covers weather disruption and expect that the itinerary may change on the day. February to April is the dry, settled window; see when to go for the whole picture.
Pictures from this route
Who this trip is not for
Seven days, one long travel day and a town that is busier than its photographs. Here is who should book something else.
- Anyone travelling in October or November who cannot accept a changed itinerary. The central flood season is real, the 2025 event killed at least 219 people, and Hoi An floods to some degree most years. Come in February to April if you can choose.
- Travellers who want Ho Chi Minh City or the Mekong Delta as well. The south is another flight and at least two more days. Take ten days north to south instead of compressing this one.
- Anyone who cannot climb down a short ladder from the deck into the tender. Boats in the bay have no lift and there is no second route onto the water; a rowed bamboo boat can take the place of the kayak if you tell us at the time of booking and not on the morning itself.
- People who dislike crowds and will not get up early. The Hoi An old town between seven and nine in the morning and the same streets at four in the afternoon are two different experiences, and My Son at 06:30 and My Son at 09:00 are two different sites. This itinerary is built around early starts because they are the only fix.
- Parties travelling between June and September who cannot absorb a suspended bay sailing. Storms close the bay two or three times a season with 12 to 24 hours notice. We move you ashore and refund the boat night, but the night is gone.
How the days actually run
Day 4, counted honestly
Disembark at 11:00, three and a half hours to Noi Bai, two hours in the airport, an hour twenty in the air, forty-five minutes down to Hoi An. A domestic flight costs about half a day once both airports are in the arithmetic.
Three nights, one hotel
Everything after Day 4 happens from one room. That is the whole design of this route and the reason it feels longer than seven days.
The one alarm that matters
My Son is quiet until roughly half past eight. Leaving at 05:30 buys three hours of a thousand-year-old Cham site with almost nobody in it.
Seven days, a month, and how many of you?
Send those three things. You will get the boat, the hotel in Hoi An we would put you in, and a firm price — usually inside one working day.
Questions travellers ask most
Why three nights in Hoi An rather than two plus somewhere else?
Because the alternative is another transfer. Two nights in Hoi An and one in Hue means a two-and-a-half-hour drive over the Hai Van pass, a new hotel, and packing twice more inside a seven-day trip.
Three nights in one place buys the old town at seven in the morning, My Son before the buses, a full afternoon in the water villages, a tailoring fitting if you want one, and a beach morning at the end. If Hue matters to you more than any of those, take the eight-day route, which gives Hue two nights of its own rather than half a day.
Is Hoi An too crowded to be worth it?
The old town is very busy from about ten in the morning until late in the evening, most of the year. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. More than a thousand of its buildings are protected, the central streets are closed to cars, and coaches arrive all day from Da Nang, 30 km away.
What we do about it is timing. The two hours after seven in the morning, and the hour after nine at night, are quiet and are the town at its best. The rest of the day belongs to the villages, the beach and the ruins, which is where our schedule puts you. Read our page on Hoi An, which says the same thing at more length.
What happens if a storm closes the bay or a flight is cancelled?
Bay sailings are suspended by the port authorities when winds reach a set threshold, usually with 12 to 24 hours notice, and it happens two or three times a season between June and September. We move you to a hotel ashore at our cost and refund the boat night in full, or reschedule if your dates allow.
A cancelled domestic flight is easier: there are many Hanoi to Da Nang departures a day, and we rebook you on the next one and hold the driver in Da Nang. What neither of us can do is give a lost night back, which is why the storm months are priced lower and flagged rather than glossed over.
Can we fly into Hanoi and out of Da Nang on separate tickets?
You can, and for this trip an open-jaw international ticket into Hanoi and out of Da Nang is usually the cheapest way to do it. Da Nang has direct services to several East Asian hubs, so a long-haul connection through Seoul, Taipei, Bangkok or Singapore is straightforward.
If your return has to leave from Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, add a domestic hop of an hour and twenty on Day 7 and leave at least three hours between the two flights. Send us the flight numbers before you buy and we will tell you whether the connection is realistic rather than merely legal.
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