Limestone bays up north, a delta down south. The rest of it eats better.
Which Ha Long boat actually anchors somewhere quiet. What a Ninh Binh day out costs once the boat rower is paid. Whether Cu Chi is worth a morning of your Saigon. Reviews of every tour you can book in Vietnam.
Ha Long Bay, a day boat
Mua Cave, above Tam Coc
Lantern boats, Hoi An
A sampan on the Mekong
Four days out the whole trip gets planned around.
A tunnel network, a jeep, a bay and a river valley. What each costs, and what the travellers who went say about it.
01The Saigon morningCu Chi Tunnels Tour from HCM City – Morning or AfternoonTwo hundred kilometres of tunnel, dug by hand, kept as it was. Take the morning slot before the heat sits in the trees.
02The Hanoi loopHanoi Jeep Tour: Food, Culture and Fun by Vietnam Army JeepAn old army jeep through the Long Bien backstreets, stopping wherever the food is. The evening version runs past the train tracks.- 03The bay dayHa Long Bay Day Cruise – Swimming, Meal, KayakingOut of Hanoi at dawn, swimming off the boat by noon, back for dinner. The day trip most people take instead of an overnight cabin.
04The valley dayFull-Day Ninh Binh Highlights Tour from HanoiRice flats, a river through three caves, and the climb up Mua for the view everyone recognises. Two hours south of the city.
The good Vietnamese day usually ends wet.
Drowned limestone in the north, mangrove channels in the south, and a river through the middle of everything. Three kinds of boat day, what it costs to board each one, and where it sails from.
Six cities, and the best day out in each.
A capital with a lake in the middle of it, a delta port that never stops, a trading town of tailors and lanterns, a beach city with a cable car behind it, an emperor’s citadel on the Perfume River, and a hill station in the pines.
The days out more travellers take than anything else in Vietnam.
Every Vietnamese tour we have reviewed →Tunnels, jeeps, boats and a plastic stool with a bowl on it. These are the bookings that go before the rest.
1
Cu Chi Tunnels Tour from HCM City – Morning or Afternoon
Review of the Cu Chi Tunnels tour from Ho Chi Minh City, with tunnel access, war history, transport details, costs, and practical booking tips.
From · $15
Read our review →
2
Hanoi Jeep Tour: Food, Culture and Fun by Vietnam Army Jeep
from $55
3
Mekong Delta Tour with Sampan Journey
from $16
4
Ho Chi Minh City Street Food Tour & Sightseeing By Motorbike
from $28
5
Full-Day Ninh Binh Highlights Tour from Hanoi
from $79
6
Cu Chi Tunnels-Tapioca Small Group Tour Morning or Afternoon
from $14
7
Ha Long Bay Day Cruise – Swimming, Meal, Kayaking
from $41
8
Cu Chi Tunnels and Mekong Delta Signature Tour
from $33
Nobody eats standing up here, and nobody eats alone.
Bun cha over charcoal in a Hanoi alley, banh mi handed through a shutter, an egg coffee whipped for four minutes upstairs. Somebody local has to take you the first time.
The dry Ha Long, and the wet one.
The same limestone runs from the bay inland to Ninh Binh, where it stands in rice paddy instead of sea. Rowers take you through the caves at Trang An with their feet; the climb up Mua is 500 steps and everybody does it anyway.
- 1Full-Day Ninh Binh Highlights Tour from Hanoifrom $79
- 2Ninh Binh Full-Day Tour from Hanoi to Hoa Lu, Tam Coc & Mua Cave Via Boat & Bikefrom $33
- 3Ninh Binh, Bai Dinh/Hoa Lu, Trang An, & Mua Cave Tourfrom $46
Underground at Cu Chi, then out into the nine dragons.
Two very different mornings leave the same city. One goes forty kilometres north-west into a hand-dug tunnel system you crawl through on your elbows. The other goes south into the delta, where the road runs out and a sampan takes over.
- 1Cu Chi Tunnels Tour from HCM City – Morning or Afternoonfrom $15
- 2Mekong Delta Tour with Sampan Journeyfrom $16
- 3Cu Chi Tunnels-Tapioca Small Group Tour Morning or Afternoonfrom $14
What a day out in Vietnam actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A good number of the best Vietnamese days cost less than a taxi to the airport.
Street-food walks, tunnel mornings, a basket boat, a cooking class with the market shop first.
The full-day standards: the bay by boat, Ninh Binh with lunch, the pass by motorbike.
Overnight cabins, private cars with a driver, and the multi-day loops through the far north.
Three things that happen nowhere else.
Motorbikes, cafés and river boats exist everywhere. A four-day loop around a limestone plateau, a coffee shop that seats you eighteen inches from a live railway, and a round woven boat you spin like a coin do not.
The Ha Giang Loop
Four days on a motorbike around the Dong Van karst plateau, up against the Chinese border, on a road the army cut through the rock in the 1960s. Most riders go on the back of somebody else’s bike — the local “easy riders” know where the fog sits and which switchbacks eat tyres. Groups leave Hanoi on the night bus and come back on it.
- 1Ha Giang Loop 3 days Small group- From Ha Noi★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,114 reviews
- 2Ha Giang Loop 3D/2N Private Room+Free Dorm Hotel 1N before tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 993 reviews
- 3Ha Giang Loop 4 Days 3 Nights Motorbike Tour with easy Rider★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 972 reviews
The Train Street
The Hanoi–Ho Chi Minh line runs between two rows of houses off Le Duan, close enough that the shutters have to come in. Cafés put stools on the sleepers between trains and pull them back when the horn sounds. Access depends on whoever is minding the barrier that week, so it is booked with a guide who knows the timetable.
- 1Guided Food Tour with Train Street Visit★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 6,239 reviews
- 2Street Food Tour with Train Street & Hidden Alleyways★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,831 reviews
- 3Guided Street Food Tour with Train Street Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 2,479 reviews
The Basket Boats
The thung chai is a round bamboo coracle, waterproofed with resin, that the French tax code accidentally invented — a boat tax on boats produced something that technically was not one. In the coconut palms at Cam Thanh the rowers spin them on the spot, fast enough to lift water, for anyone who claps.
- 1Basket Boat Ride in the Coconut Forest★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 4,956 reviews
- 2Cooking Class Hoi An:Local Market, Basket Boat, Fishing & Cooking★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,660 reviews
- 3Coconut Basket Boat Ride by Hangcoconut★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,364 reviews
Four Vietnamese bookings that will not wait.
Most of this country can be arranged from a hotel lobby the night before. These four run on departure days, cabin counts, showtimes and a level crossing that closes when it feels like it.
- 01Ha Giang Loop 3 days Small group- From Ha NoiThe loop leaves Hanoi on set days and the overnight bus seats go first. Turn up on the wrong day and you wait for the next one.
- 02Ha Long Bay Day Cruise – Swimming, Meal, KayakingCabins are counted, and the bay is closed to boats whenever a storm is called. Both reasons to hold a booking rather than hope.
- 03Water Puppet Show TicketsThe Thang Long theatre runs a handful of fixed showtimes a day and the front rows go to whoever booked. Walk-ups get the back or the next slot.
- 04Guided Food Tour with Train Street VisitThe cafés only seat visitors around the scheduled trains, and the barrier gets closed by the police without notice. Go with somebody holding the timetable.
Central Vietnam floods in autumn. The north sweats in June.
Hoi An puts the furniture upstairs most Octobers, and Hanoi in high summer is thirty-eight degrees with the humidity of a kettle. The answer is the same either way: get inside, and eat or make something. A kitchen, a coffee counter, a lantern workshop, a puppet theatre with a flooded stage.
By place — north to south
By kind of day — boat, bike, kitchen or tunnel
Hanoi to Saigon, the way almost everybody does it first.
Ha Long Bay
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