Vietnam coast and islands, thirteen days
The 1,650 km of coastline that the country is built along, taken as the structure of the trip rather than as scenery between cities. Two nights on the water in Lan Ha, three in the old trading port at Hoi An, and three on Con Dao, which most visitors to Vietnam never reach and which is now administratively part of Ho Chi Minh City.
At a glance
- Duration
- 13 days, 12 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 — swimming and kayaking, nothing over 6 km on foot
- From
- USD 3,190 per person
Who this is for
Vietnam is a country 1,650 km long and perhaps 50 km wide where it matters, and almost every settlement of consequence sits on or near the water. Most itineraries treat the coast as the thing you look at between the cities. This one treats it as the structure: the trip runs down it, and five of the twelve nights are spent either on the sea or a few metres from it.
The two decisions that make this route different from the standard fortnight are both about staying put. Two nights aboard in Lan Ha rather than one, because the second day is the one that gets you past the zone the day boats work and into water where you can swim off the back of the boat without an audience. And three nights on Con Dao rather than the two that a short flight tempts people into, because the island holds a prison complex that takes a full and rather heavy morning, and a coastline that deserves the days either side of it.
If islands matter less to you than the far north, the twelve-day north-to-south route trades Con Dao for two nights in the Sa Pa valleys. If you want the imperial city and the highlands as well, the fifteen-day grand route adds Hue, Da Lat and Mui Ne. And if Con Dao alone is what caught your eye, the four-day Con Dao trip does it from Ho Chi Minh City without the rest.
Day by day
Arrive in Hanoi
Met inside the arrivals hall at Noi Bai with a name board rather than outside the barrier among the taxi touts. The transfer is 45 minutes and 25 km. Rooms are held from midday whatever time you land, which on a route with this much flying is worth more than it sounds.
If you are in before 15:00 we walk: Hoan Kiem lake, Ngoc Son temple on its island, and the ninety minutes either side of sunset when the Old Quarter stops being a traffic problem. Dinner is your own and we send a short list at three price levels.
Hanoi on foot
A full day starting at 08:00, because the Temple of Literature at eight and the Temple of Literature at half past nine are different places. The morning takes in the temple, the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum complex from the outside and the One Pillar Pagoda. The mausoleum keeps its own hours and closes for two months a year for maintenance; we tell you which months before you book rather than on the morning.
The afternoon is the Old Quarter properly — thirty-six streets that still carry the name of the guild that worked them — the Long Bien bridge, and egg coffee somewhere off the coach circuit. The water puppet theatre is 50 minutes, is genuinely old, and is also very much a tourist show; we book it only if you want it and we do not pretend it is a highlight.
To the coast, and aboard in Lan Ha Bay
Away at 08:00: 170 km and 2 hours 30 to 3 hours to the Hai Phong side of the bay system, one stop, no showrooms. Boarding around midday and lunch as the boat clears the harbour. Lan Ha is the southern end of the same drowned limestone as Ha Long, separated by a provincial line rather than by geology, and it carries a fraction of the traffic that goes through the central channel.
The first afternoon follows the standard shape: an hour of kayaking from about 15:30, a swim if the water is over 24 degrees, and the light going from the sun deck. What is different is that you are not packing again in the morning. Dinner is a set seafood menu, and any allergy goes to the galley in writing at the booking stage.
The second day on the water
This is the day that justifies the second night, and it looks nothing like the first. Overnight boats that do one night all run the same triangle; the ones that do two push south and east into water the day fleet cannot reach and back before dark. You wake at anchor somewhere with no other boat in sight, which does not happen on a one-night cruise.
The day is deliberately loose: a long kayak into a cove that closes over your head at high tide, a stop at a floating fishing settlement where the pens are worked rather than displayed, an hour on a beach on the south coast of Cat Ba island, and swimming off the stern in the afternoon. If the weather turns we sit it out somewhere sheltered rather than running a schedule. Nobody has to be anywhere.
Off the boat and south by air
The longest day of the thirteen, and worth planning your energy around. Breakfast, a last morning visit — a cave or a floating village, depending on which route the bay authority has assigned that week — and off the boat at about 11:00. The drive to Noi Bai is 3 hours 30 and 190 km, because the airport is on the far side of Hanoi from the coast.
The flight to Da Nang is 1 hour 20 in the air and roughly four hours door to door, then 45 minutes and 30 km on to Hoi An. You are in your room between 20:00 and 21:00. We do not schedule anything for the evening and Day 6 starts at nine.
Hoi An, the trading port on foot
Hoi An became part of Da Nang city in the provincial mergers of July 2025, which most published itineraries have not caught up with. The town is unchanged: a Japanese covered bridge, assembly halls built by Chinese trading communities from Fujian and Guangdong, and merchant houses that have stayed in the same families for six or seven generations. A ticket booklet bought at the entrances covers a set number of them and your guide handles it.
In the afternoon you choose between the Tra Que herb village, where the beds are fertilised with river weed and have been for four hundred years, and the water coconut palms at Cam Thanh. Be warned about the second: the basket-boat circuit there has become a spinning-boat show with sound systems and is genuinely unpleasant after ten in the morning. We go early or we do not go.
My Son at dawn, then the beach
Away at 06:00 for My Son, an hour and a quarter inland. Cham brick sanctuaries built across roughly nine centuries, badly damaged by bombing in 1969, and smaller than the pictures imply; several groups are still rubble under scaffolding. At seven in the morning the mist is in the bowl and the first coaches are an hour behind you, which is the whole argument for the early start.
Back by midday. The afternoon goes to the beach at An Bang or Ha My, both a few minutes from the old town, and this is the first genuinely idle half-day of the trip. If you want clothes made, order today: two fittings across 48 hours is the minimum for anything you will actually wear at home, and this itinerary gives you that window where a shorter one does not.
Down the coast to Nha Trang
Da Nang airport is 45 minutes and 30 km from Hoi An and the hop to Cam Ranh is about an hour in the air. Cam Ranh to Nha Trang is another hour and 50 km along a coast road that runs above a series of empty bays and is one of the better drives in the country. Count the whole thing as half a day.
The afternoon is the Po Nagar towers on the hill above the river mouth. It is the same Cham civilisation you saw at My Son the day before, but still in use as a working temple with incense burning and women in white praying at the foot of the main tower. Seeing the ruined site and the living one within thirty hours is the reason Nha Trang sits where it does in this itinerary.
Nha Trang, the water or the road south
A word first: Nha Trang is a high-rise resort city with a very large package market from Russia and Korea, and the seafront behind the sand is a wall of twenty-storey hotels. The bay is genuinely good and the town is not quiet or old. We would rather you knew that in advance than discovered it on arrival.
You pick in the morning. A boat to the northern islands with snorkelling off Hon Mun, which has a marine reserve fee and is best before the wind gets up after eleven; or a 90-minute drive south into what was Ninh Thuan until the July 2025 merger into Khanh Hoa, for the Po Klong Garai towers, the salt pans and the vineyards, in a landscape of sand and cactus that looks like no other part of Vietnam. Both are good. The second sees almost no foreign visitors at all.
Nha Trang to Con Dao, two flights
The hardest day to schedule and the one we watch most closely. Cam Ranh is an hour and 50 km away, the flight to Tan Son Nhat is 1 hour 5, and the onward flight to Con Dao is about an hour over roughly 240 km. Whether the connection is two hours or five depends entirely on how the Con Dao schedule falls that week, which is why we book this pair of flights before anything else on the trip.
Two practical notes. The Con Dao aircraft is small, the hold allowance is tighter than on the mainland routes, and we confirm the exact figure with the airline for your dates rather than guess. And fares on this leg move a long way — roughly USD 47 to USD 130 one way depending on season and how early it is booked, which is a real argument for confirming your dates early. You land in the late afternoon and the drive from the airstrip into Con Son town is short.
The prison island, and what it means here
Con Dao is now administratively part of Ho Chi Minh City, 240 km offshore, and for most of the past century and a half it was a prison. The French built the first camps in 1862 and the complex ran under successive administrations until 1975. The morning covers Phu Hai camp, the cell blocks and the so-called tiger cages, which are open pits with bars overhead. It is a heavy two hours and there is no way to make it otherwise; we go early and we do not rush you through it.
The afternoon is deliberately gentle: the Van Son pagoda on the hill, the old French quarter along the seafront where the administrative buildings are being repainted rather than replaced, and a swim. In the evening, if you want it, Vietnamese visitors come to the Hang Duong cemetery around midnight to leave offerings at the grave of Vo Thi Sau, a young woman executed here in 1952. It is a genuine act of national devotion and not a spectacle laid on for anyone. If you go, go quietly and let your guide explain the etiquette first.
The coast of Con Dao
A full day on and in the water, which is what the third night buys you. The morning is a boat: snorkelling over hard coral in the marine park, a landing on one of the outer islands, and a long lunch aboard. The reef here is in better condition than anything on the mainland coast, largely because the island was closed to visitors for so long and because the park rangers still control access.
The afternoon is Dam Trau beach, which sits below the approach path to the airstrip and is the best sand on the island, or a slow drive around the coast road with stops wherever the light is worth it. Turtles nest on Bay Canh through the summer months; whether the ranger station is taking overnight visitors in any given year changes, and we check before we promise it rather than after you have paid.
Con Dao to Ho Chi Minh City, and home
The morning is yours as far as the flight allows — usually a last swim and a slow breakfast, because departures from Con Dao are mostly late morning or early afternoon. The flight to Tan Son Nhat is about an hour.
What happens next depends on your onward ticket. Most long-haul departures from Ho Chi Minh City leave between 22:00 and 01:30, which leaves a long afternoon; we include a day room in District 1 so that you have a shower and somewhere to put your bags, and if you want the afternoon filled we can use it on Cho Lon, the Chinese quarter, or on the War Remnants Museum. If your flight is early the next morning we will price a full extra night instead and say so plainly rather than leaving you to work it out at the airport.
What it costs
| Party size | Comfortable | Excellent | Exceptional |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 travellers | USD 4,150 | USD 5,310 | USD 6,020 |
| 3 – 4 | USD 3,690 | USD 4,720 | USD 5,350 |
| 5 – 6 | USD 3,410 | USD 4,360 | USD 4,940 |
| 7 – 8 | USD 3,190 | USD 4,080 | USD 4,630 |
Two things push this trip above the twelve-day route despite there being one fewer internal flight. The first is the second bay night, which is the most expensive night of the itinerary in every class: a cabin on a boat that sails a two-night route costs roughly half again what a one-night cabin costs, because the boat carries fewer passengers over more fuel and more crew days. The second is Con Dao, where the hotel stock is small, the supply chain runs by boat and plane, and a plate of food costs noticeably more than the same plate in Nha Trang.
The Con Dao flights are also the one line item that refuses to behave. Fares run from about USD 47 to about USD 130 each way depending on season and how far ahead they are bought, and there are only so many seats a day. We hold them first and build the rest of the itinerary around what we get, which is the opposite of how most operators sequence a booking. What a Vietnam trip costs explains the supplier arithmetic; how to book explains why we ask for your dates before we quote this particular route.
Included and not included
What the price includes
- Twelve nights: two in Hanoi, two aboard in Lan Ha Bay, three in Hoi An, two in Nha Trang and three on Con Dao, in the class you choose
- All three internal flights: Hanoi to Da Nang, Da Nang to Cam Ranh, and Cam Ranh to Tan Son Nhat with the connection on to Con Dao and the return
- Private air-conditioned vehicle and driver throughout, and a vehicle with a driver on Con Dao for the two touring days
- A private English-speaking guide in the north, the centre, Nha Trang and on Con Dao
- All meals shown in the day-by-day: 12 breakfasts, 9 lunches and 2 dinners aboard
- Bay entry and route fees, both kayak sessions, My Son and Po Nagar tickets, the Hoi An ticket booklet, the Con Dao prison complex entries and the marine park boat day
- The day room in Ho Chi Minh City on Day 13 for a late departure
- 24-hour phone number answered by a person in Vietnam
What it does not include
- International flights — quoted separately at cost if you want us to book them
- 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: 11 dinners and 3 lunches across the thirteen days
- Drinks with meals, and everything aboard the boat except water and tea
- Diving on Con Dao, which is an option rather than an inclusion
- Tips for guides, drivers and boat crew — customary, never included
Con Dao is served by a single short runway and a small aircraft, and the schedule is thinner than any mainland route. Fog in the early morning and wind in the north-east monsoon both delay flights, and a cancelled leg cannot simply be rolled to the next departure two hours later, because there may not be one. This is why we build three nights rather than two, why we book these flights before anything else, and why we hold a contingency plan that puts you back on the mainland a day early rather than leaving you to miss an international connection. The sea route from Vung Tau takes 3 to 3 hours 30 and from Tran De 2 to 2 hours 30, and both exist as a fallback, but neither is a comfortable substitute at short notice.
Pictures from this route
Who this trip is not for
Four reasons to book something else, written before you pay rather than after.
- Anyone who reads three internal flights and five bases in thirteen days as restful. Days 5 and 10 are both essentially travel days: eleven hours from the boat to Hoi An on the first, and two flights with a connection on the second. Between them the trip is genuinely slow, but those two days are not, and no amount of planning makes them shorter.
- Travellers who need a guaranteed departure date at the end. Con Dao flights are weather-sensitive and thin; if you have a fixed international connection out of Tan Son Nhat on Day 13, tell us and we will build a spare night into the plan. If you cannot spare that night, this is the wrong island.
- Anyone whose only dates are October or November. This route puts three nights in Hoi An and two aboard in the north, and central Vietnam is in flood season then. The 2025 floods ran 16 October to 6 December, with a national record 1,739.6 mm of rain in 24 hours at Bach Ma and at least 219 people dead or missing. March, April and December are the compromise months worth taking.
- People who dislike being on a boat. Two nights aboard is the point of the northern half; there is no ashore alternative that keeps the shape of the trip. If one night is your ceiling, take the twelve-day north-to-south route instead.
- Anyone expecting a resort island at the end. Con Dao has a small number of good places to stay, a working town, a prison museum that is the reason most Vietnamese visitors come, and very little nightlife. It is beautiful and it is quiet in a way that some people find flat after three days.
How the coast connects, and what the island leg needs
The three flights are what hold this itinerary together, and each has a different character. It is worth seeing them side by side before you commit to the route.
| Leg | In the air | Distance | What to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hanoi to Da Nang, Day 5 | 1 hr 20 | — | Frequent all day; the constraint is the 3 hr 30 drive from the pier before it |
| Da Nang to Cam Ranh, Day 8 | About 1 hour | — | Several a day; the airport is 50 km and an hour from Nha Trang |
| Cam Ranh to Con Dao via Tan Son Nhat, Day 10 | 1 hr 5 then 1 hr | About 240 km on the second leg | The thin leg. Fares USD 47 to USD 130, small aircraft, tight hold allowance |
Five nights on or by the sea
Two aboard in Lan Ha, three on Con Dao, plus beach afternoons at An Bang and Nha Trang. The trip is built so that the water is the constant and the cities are the punctuation, rather than the other way round.
Con Dao is booked first
We hold the island flights before the hotels, the boat or anything else, because there are only so many seats a day and the rest of the itinerary can bend around them. Most operators do this in the opposite order and then tell you the dates moved.
A number that a person answers
Your guide has our operations line and so do you. It rings in Vietnam, and on the island leg it is answered by someone who can rebook a flight rather than log a ticket.
Thirteen days, and a month you can move?
Send us the month and the party size. We will come back with the Con Dao flights we can actually hold and the boat we would put you on, usually within one working day.
Questions travellers ask most
Is the second night in Lan Ha Bay worth the money?
It is the single best-value upgrade on this itinerary, and it is also the one people question most before they go and never afterwards. A one-night cruise runs a fixed triangle: board, kayak, dinner, cave, disembark. The second day changes the geography — the boat pushes into water the day fleet does not reach, and you wake at anchor somewhere quiet.
It costs more per night than any other bed on the trip, for the reason that a boat carrying twenty cabins over two nights burns the same crew and fuel as one carrying them over one. If the budget has to give somewhere, give it here last.
Why Con Dao rather than Phu Quoc?
They are different products and we sell both. Phu Quoc has an international airport, large resorts, a cable car and a theme park, and it is the right answer for anyone who wants a full-service beach week — see the five-day Phu Quoc trip.
Con Dao has sixteen islands, a marine park with reef in genuinely good condition, a prison complex that is one of the most serious historical sites in the country, and a town where almost nothing is built for foreign visitors. It is quieter, it is harder to reach, and it will disappoint anyone who wants a swim-up bar. That is the trade, and this itinerary makes it deliberately.
What happens if the Con Dao flight is cancelled?
We build the trip with that in mind rather than hoping. The island is served by a short runway, a small aircraft and a thin schedule; fog in the early morning and wind in the north-east monsoon both cause delays, and there is not always a later departure the same day.
If the outbound leg goes, we move the Con Dao nights and use the time in Ho Chi Minh City or the Mekong Delta at our cost. If the return leg goes, we get you onto the next available flight and, where the timing is impossible, onto the fast ferry to Vung Tau, which takes 3 to 3 hours 30. What we will not do is put you on a connection so tight that a two-hour delay costs you an international flight.
Can we swim everywhere on this route?
Almost. Lan Ha is swimmable when the water is above about 24 degrees, which in practice means roughly April to October, and the crew will tell you honestly when it is too cold rather than let you find out. The beaches at An Bang and Ha My near Hoi An have a rip in the north-east monsoon months and are flagged accordingly; take the flags seriously, because the surf is bigger than it looks.
Nha Trang and Con Dao are swimmable year round. Con Dao has the clearest water of the three and the best snorkelling by a wide margin, and the marine park boat day on Day 12 is where you will actually want your own mask.
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