Vietnam classic, eleven days
The itinerary we recommend more often than any other for a first visit. Hanoi and a night among the limestone of Lan Ha, the Nguyen citadel and the river tombs at Hue, Hoi An and My Son, then Saigon with a day at Cu Chi and a day in the delta.
At a glance
- Duration
- 11 days, 10 nights
- Party size
- 2 to 8, private
- Starts
- Hanoi, Noi Bai airport
- Ends
- Ho Chi Minh City, Tan Son Nhat airport
- Effort
- Easy to moderate — 6 km on the longest walking day, two early starts
- From
- USD 2,690 per person
Who this is for
This is the route we put in front of most people planning a first visit, and the reason is a single day. Eleven days rather than ten is what allows Hue to have two nights instead of none, and Hue is the piece that turns a run of famous places into a country with a history you can follow. Without it you go from a French colonial city to a merchant port to a wartime capital and the thread between them is missing; with it you stand in the Nguyen citadel, which is where the thread runs.
Five stops, and none of them gets one night. That rule does most of the work here. A one-night stop costs a morning packing and an afternoon arriving, and by the time you have paid both you have seen a hotel and a road. Two nights buys a full day; three, in Saigon, buys a day for Cu Chi and a day for the delta with the city still getting its own afternoon. Nothing on this itinerary exists so that it can be listed.
The trade-offs are stated rather than buried. There are two internal flights and each costs about half a day. Sapa is not here — it is six hours from Hanoi each way and needs its own three days. The far north is not here either. If you have a fortnight and want the mountains as well, look at the twelve-day route with Sapa and Nha Trang or fifteen days. If eleven is one too many, the ten-day highlights trip is the same route with Hue removed, and it is the only thing removed.
Day by day
Arrive in Hanoi
Your guide and driver are inside the arrivals hall at Noi Bai with a name board, not out beyond the barrier. The drive into the city is 45 minutes and 25 km over the Nhat Tan bridge. Rooms are held from midday regardless of your landing time, so an 06:00 arrival means a shower and a bed rather than a lobby.
What we do with the rest of Day 1 depends entirely on the clock. Land before mid-afternoon and there is time for a first walk on flat ground: Hoan Kiem lake, the wooden causeway to Ngoc Son temple, and the hour either side of sunset when the Old Quarter stops being traffic and becomes a place where people live outdoors. Land at ten at night and the plan is a bowl of pho two streets from the hotel. Your guide will tell you which one you are having when we see your flight number.
Hanoi, a full day on foot
Out at 08:00. The Temple of Literature was founded in 1070 as the country’s first university and its 82 stone stelae, each on a carved tortoise, carry the names of every doctoral graduate from 1442 to 1779 — one of the very few continuous written records of its kind anywhere. At eight in the morning the courtyards are quiet enough to read them. From there the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum complex from the outside, and the One Pillar Pagoda beside it.
The afternoon walks the Old Quarter street by street. Thirty-six streets, each named for the guild that worked it, and several still doing the same trade six centuries on. The Long Bien bridge closes the day: designed in the Eiffel workshops, opened in 1902, bombed repeatedly between 1967 and 1972 and never fully put out of use, and still carrying trains and motorbikes today. Egg coffee somewhere ordinary on the way back. The water puppet theatre is offered rather than assumed — it is 50 minutes, the form is a thousand years old, and the performance is unmistakably staged for visitors.
Hanoi to Lan Ha Bay, aboard by midday
Leave at 08:00. The road to the coast is 170 km and takes two and a half to three hours, expressway for most of it, with one stop chosen for clean lavatories rather than for the commission a jade or embroidery showroom would pay us. Boarding around noon; lunch is served once the boat is clear of the harbour.
Lan Ha is the southern lobe of the same flooded karst plateau as Ha Long, separated by a provincial line rather than by any change in the rock, and it carries a small share of the traffic — the Lan Ha bay fee is 30,000 VND a head against 240,000 to 290,000 on the main Ha Long routes. The fishing communities here were never moved off the water. Kayaking is at half past three, once the day boats have turned for home; swimming if the sea is over 24 degrees. Dinner aboard is a set seafood menu and allergies go to the galley in writing before you sail, not at the table.
Off the water and south to Hue
The first moving day, set out in full because it is the one people underestimate. Tai chi on the sun deck at 06:15 for those who want it. The morning visit is a cave or a floating settlement depending on which route the bay authority has assigned that week — we name the one we expect and confirm it the evening before. Brunch aboard, off the boat at about 11:00, then 190 km and three and a half hours to Noi Bai.
Hanoi to Hue is 1 hour 15 in the air. Add two hours at the airport at each end, plus 25 minutes from Phu Bai into the city, and the flight has taken the second half of your day. That arithmetic applies to every domestic hop in Vietnam and to every operator who sells one; the difference is whether it is written down before you book. You reach the river bank in the early evening and eat within walking distance of the hotel. Nothing else is scheduled, on purpose.
The Nguyen citadel and two river tombs
Hue was the capital from 1802 to 1945 under thirteen Nguyen emperors, and it is the only place in Vietnam where the imperial period is still standing rather than described. The Imperial Citadel opens at 07:00 and the ticket is 200,000 VND; we are inside at opening. The walls enclose 520 hectares, of which the French bombardment of 1947 and the fighting of early 1968 destroyed a very large part. Restoration is deliberately legible — new brick is left visibly new — so you can read the damage off the buildings, which is more interesting than a seamless rebuild.
The afternoon is two tombs on the Perfume River, 150,000 VND each on their own or 420,000 VND bundled with the citadel. Minh Mang, 12 km upriver and finished in 1843, is a single symmetrical axis of gates, courtyards and lakes, and is the most rigorously Confucian construction in the country. Khai Dinh, completed in 1931, is reinforced concrete blackened by mould, with an interior of porcelain and broken glass mosaic that people find either magnificent or in poor taste. Tu Duc, a garden compound where an emperor wrote poetry, is the alternative if you prefer trees to statements. All the sites close at 17:30 and there is no late entry.
Thien Mu, the Hai Van pass, and into Hoi An
A slower morning first. Thien Mu pagoda stands on a bluff over the river, its seven-storey brick tower built in 1844; in a side building the monks keep the Austin saloon that carried Thich Quang Duc to Saigon in June 1963. Then the Dong Ba market, which is where the city buys its food rather than its souvenirs, and a bowl of bun bo Hue — beef, lemongrass, fermented shrimp and chilli, a hotter and heavier broth than anything in Hanoi.
South after that. It is 120 km to Da Nang and about two and a half hours by way of the Hai Van pass, which we take instead of the tunnel below it. The road climbs to roughly 500 metres, forms the sharpest climatic boundary in the country — cloud on the northern side and sun on the southern is a common sight from the top — and carries a set of concrete bunkers built by the French and used by every force that came after them. Down past the Lang Co lagoon, through Da Nang, then 30 km and 45 minutes more to Hoi An. In your room by mid-afternoon.
Hoi An, the town and the water around it
The old town at 07:30, while the shophouses are opening their shutters and before the first coach. Hoi An traded with Japan, China, Portugal and the Netherlands from the sixteenth century until the Thu Bon river silted up around 1800 and business moved to Da Nang. The reason the eighteenth-century timber and brick frontages are still here is exactly that the town became commercially irrelevant for a century and a half. The ticket admits you to five heritage buildings from a list of about twenty: assembly halls built by Chinese trading communities, a merchant house occupied by the eighth generation of the same family, the Japanese covered bridge.
The middle of the day goes elsewhere, because between eleven and four the old streets are among the most crowded places in Vietnam and no amount of guiding fixes that. The choices are the Tra Que herb village, where the beds are fertilised with weed dragged from the lagoon and you are welcome to work one; the water coconut palms at Cam Thanh in a round basket boat, which is a genuinely odd craft to sit in; or a bicycle to An Bang beach, 4 km and flat all the way. Back into the town after five, when the light is low and the day-trippers have gone.
My Son before dawn, then the flight to Saigon
Away at 05:30 for My Son, 45 km inland. The Cham built and rebuilt brick sanctuaries in this bowl of hills from the fourth century to the thirteenth, most of them dedicated to Shiva, and the mortar they used has never been convincingly identified. American bombing in August 1969 destroyed a substantial part of what remained. Being at the gate when it opens gets you an hour in cool air with the birds audible; by ten there are coaches and the temperature is in the thirties. Hoi An and My Son have both been part of Da Nang city since the provincial merger of July 2025 — older maps and half the signage still say Quang Nam.
Back to Hoi An by mid-morning for a late breakfast and a swim if there is time, then to Da Nang airport, 30 km and 45 minutes. Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City is 1 hour 20 in the air, and the same two hours at each end applies. Tan Son Nhat is unusually close to the centre — 8 km — so you are in District 1 within 45 minutes of landing. The evening is a first walk: the 1880s post office, the cathedral from outside while its restoration continues, the opera house end of Dong Khoi, and dinner wherever you feel like eating after a day that started in the dark.
Cu Chi, and the war from both directions
Out at 07:30 for Cu Chi, 70 km and an hour and a half northwest. At its greatest extent the tunnel system here ran to something over 200 km on three levels, dug by hand through laterite clay that sets hard as it dries, and it operated as a base area inside artillery range of Saigon for the better part of twenty years. A 20-metre section has been enlarged for visitors and there is an exit halfway along it. If you are claustrophobic, do not go down: the cross-section model beside the entrance shows the original dimensions, and they are smaller than almost anyone expects.
The afternoon is the War Remnants Museum, which is two hard hours and is presented from one point of view. Your guide will say that out loud rather than let you discover it; the photojournalists’ room and the material on dioxin are what most people carry out with them. We finish somewhere quiet afterwards rather than moving straight to something cheerful. In the evening, if you want it, Cho Lon — the Chinese quarter, forty minutes west, where Cantonese and Teochew families have traded since the eighteenth century and where the food is different again.
A day in the Mekong delta
Ben Tre is 80 km and two hours south, and we go there rather than to My Tho because the landings are smaller and the boats are not queueing three deep. The delta supports some 17 million people on ground made entirely of river silt; almost none of it is more than a couple of metres above the sea, which is why the roads follow the dykes and why saltwater intrusion in the dry season is the argument everybody down here is having.
The day runs slowly and is meant to. A motorised boat out onto a main channel, then a rowed sampan up a creek narrow enough to touch both banks under the water coconut, a coconut candy workshop that is a working one rather than a stage set, a brick kiln still fired with rice husk, and lunch of elephant ear fish rolled at the table by the family who cooked it. Back in the city around 17:00. This is one day in the delta and we will not sell it as more — sleeping down there is a different trip, and the five-day route is what it looks like.
Ho Chi Minh City, and the flight home
Breakfast at your own pace and a late check-out where the hotel allows one. Tan Son Nhat is 8 km from District 1, which sounds like twenty minutes and is, except between 07:00 and 09:00 and again from 16:30, when the same distance takes an hour. We build the hour in when your flight falls inside those windows and tell you why.
With a morning to spend, two things are worth doing and both are close: the Fine Arts Museum, in a 1930s villa built for a Chinese-Vietnamese merchant family, which is quiet and air-conditioned and rarely busy; or an hour around Ben Thanh market, better for watching how a city buys its lunch than for buying anything yourself. Your guide keeps the luggage either way and meets you at the time you agreed rather than an hour early.
What it costs
| Party size | Comfortable | Excellent | Exceptional |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 travellers | USD 3,495 | USD 4,475 | USD 5,070 |
| 3 – 4 | USD 3,180 | USD 4,070 | USD 4,610 |
| 5 – 6 | USD 2,880 | USD 3,685 | USD 4,175 |
| 7 – 8 | USD 2,690 | USD 3,445 | USD 3,900 |
Nothing in the three columns changes the trip itself. The guides, the drivers, the private vehicle in each region, the tickets and the order of the days are identical whichever you choose; what moves is the room. On this route the class difference is largest in two places and small everywhere else. In Lan Ha a cabin on a twenty-cabin steel boat and a cabin on a six-cabin wooden one are different products and the gap is obvious the moment you step aboard. In Hoi An the top of the market is a beach resort with its own sand and a fifteen-minute shuttle to the old town, while the middle of it is a good hotel with a courtyard pool ten minutes’ walk from the Japanese bridge. In Hue and Saigon you are mostly buying a higher floor and a quieter one.
Eleven days across three regions costs more per day than a week in one of them, and the reasons are structural rather than a margin decision: three separate vehicle and driver arrangements, three guides who each live in the region they work, two airport days that still need a car and a guide at both ends, and a boat night that is priced per cabin regardless of how many people are in it. Party size is the biggest lever on the table — moving from two travellers to six takes roughly a quarter off the per-person figure without changing anything you actually do. The supplier-level breakdown sits on what a Vietnam trip costs; deposits, balances and cancellation terms are on how to book.
Included and not included
What the price includes
- Ten nights: two in Hanoi, one aboard in Lan Ha, two in Hue, two in Hoi An, three in Saigon
- A private air-conditioned vehicle and driver in each of the three regions
- A private English-speaking guide on every touring day — nine of the eleven
- All meals shown in the day-by-day: 10 breakfasts, 8 lunches, 1 dinner
- Lan Ha bay fees, kayak hire and cave tickets
- Hue royal sites on the 420,000 VND combined ticket — the citadel and two tombs
- Hoi An old town ticket, My Son entry, Cu Chi entry and both Ben Tre boats
- The Hai Van pass road rather than the tunnel, weather permitting
- Airport meet inside the arrivals hall at Noi Bai and a 24-hour number answered in Vietnam
What it does not include
- International flights — quoted at cost on request and never marked up
- The two domestic flights, about USD 180 in total, unless you take the option above
- 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
- Drinks with meals, and everything aboard the boat beyond water and tea
- Meals not listed: 2 lunches and 9 dinners across the eleven days
- Tips for guide and driver — customary, never included, never invoiced
Vietnam runs 1,650 km north to south and does not have a single season. The north is dry and cool from November to April and hot and wet from May to September. The centre is dry from February to August and runs its storm and flood season from September to December. The south is dry from December to April and, in the wet half of the year, usually delivers a heavy shower late in the afternoon rather than a lost day. March, April and December are the three months that work reasonably in all three regions at once, and they are the months we would book for this route. See when to go for the month-by-month detail.
Pictures from this route
Who this trip is not for
Five reasons to book something else, written before you pay rather than discovered on Day 6.
- Travellers set on October or November. The centre’s flood season runs September to December and 2025 showed what its bad end looks like: floods from 16 October to 6 December, a national record 1,739.6 mm of rain in 24 hours at Bach Ma on 26–27 October, at least 219 people dead or missing, and USD 129.7 million of damage in Hue alone. Hue and Hoi An both flood, and roads over the Hai Van close. We will still run the trip on those dates if you want it, with the risk stated in writing, but we will not call it a light rainy season.
- Anyone who wants Sapa or Ha Giang in the same trip. Sapa is 315 km and around six hours from Hanoi each way and needs three days of its own; Ha Giang needs five and now requires a border area permit for foreign visitors. Neither fits here. Twelve days gets you Sapa; the far north needs fifteen or more.
- People who will not fly internally. Hanoi to Hue by rail is thirteen to fourteen hours and Hanoi to Saigon is thirty-two to thirty-five. Both are worth doing on a trip built around the railway. Neither fits inside eleven days with five stops.
- Anyone who cannot manage a ladder from the boat to the kayak tender, uneven stone steps at the Hue tombs and My Son, or a narrow plank bridge in the delta. Tell us before booking and we can substitute a rowed bamboo boat in the bay, skip the upper terraces at My Son and take the wider landing at Ben Tre. Told on the day, we can do considerably less.
- Parties who want blank days. Every day here has a start time and two of them start before six. If you want these same places at three-quarters of the pace, add days rather than removing content — the twelve-day route is the honest next size up.
How the days actually run
Two nights minimum, everywhere
No stop on this route gets a single night. One-night stops cost a morning packing and an afternoon arriving, and what you remember afterwards is the road. The eleventh day exists so that Hue gets two.
What each internal flight really costs
Seventy-five minutes to Hue, eighty to Saigon, two hours at the airport at each end, transfers on top. Days 4 and 8 are built around that rather than around a departure time we hope you will not check.
Three regions, three local guides
Your Hanoi guide does not follow you south. Each region has someone who lives there, and the handover happens in person at the airport with your itinerary in hand.
Eleven days, and a month in mind?
Send us the month, the party size and whether you would rather be in the old town or on the beach at Hoi An. We come back with the boat, the two flights we would take and a full total, usually inside one working day.
Questions travellers ask most
What does the eleventh day buy that the ten-day trip does not?
Hue, with two nights rather than a stop. That means the Imperial Citadel entered at 07:00 when it opens, two royal tombs done at walking pace rather than at a trot, Thien Mu and the Dong Ba market on the second morning, and the Hai Van pass driven in daylight on the way to Hoi An.
It also changes what the trip is about. Without Hue you see a colonial city, a merchant port and a wartime capital with no connective tissue. With it you have the imperial century in the middle, which is where nearly everything else on the route either comes from or reacts against. That is why we recommend this itinerary over the ten-day version whenever the extra day exists.
Which months should we avoid for this route?
October and November first, because of the central flood season, and we would discourage them rather than merely disclose them. Late July and August carry a real chance of a tropical storm closing Lan Ha Bay at 12 to 24 hours’ notice — it happens two or three times in a season between June and September. When it does we move you ashore at our cost and refund the boat night, but the night itself is gone.
January and February are usable but cold and grey in Hanoi, often 13 to 17 degrees under low cloud for days at a time, while the south is at its best. March, April and December are the months that hold up across all three regions, and they are what we would book if the dates are yours to choose.
Are the internal flights and the hotels booked in our names?
Yes, in every case, and you get the confirmations rather than a voucher that says "hotel of similar standard". We name the specific hotel for each of the five stops in the quotation, and if it is not available on your dates we tell you what we have substituted and why before you pay the balance.
The two domestic flights sit outside the headline price because fares swing by a factor of three between a quiet Tuesday and the week of Tet. Take the flight option and we book them at cost. Book them yourself and send us the times first — a Da Nang departure before 11:00 on Day 8 would cost you My Son.
Can we run this in reverse, starting in Ho Chi Minh City?
Yes, at the same price. Most people are better off starting in the north, because the first two days are walking days rather than driving days and jet lag is easier to absorb that way, and because finishing in the warm south suits the end of a long trip.
The case for reversing is January and February, when Hanoi sits under cold cloud and you may prefer to meet that at the end with the trip already behind you. It is also worth reversing if your international flights simply work better that way — an open-jaw ticket in one direction is often cheaper than in the other, and we would rather rearrange the itinerary than have you pay for the symmetry.
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Tell us about the trip you have in mind
Dates, party size and the places you care about are enough to start. You get a draft route and an indicative price, not a brochure.