Where to Go
Train Street Hanoi: What to Know Before You Go
A working railway running between houses, with cafes inches from the rails. Access rules change, so check before you plan around it.
Hanoi Water Puppet Show Guide
An eight-hundred-year-old village art form, now performed hourly for visitors. Worth an hour, with realistic expectations.
Day Trips from Hanoi
Four trips worth the day, one that usually is not, and the honest travel time on each.
Getting Around Hanoi
Walk the centre, Grab the rest, and understand why the metro will not help you yet.
Hanoi Old Quarter Guide
Thirty-six streets, each once dedicated to a trade, still largely doing the same jobs. Here is how to read the district rather than get lost in it.
Best Things to Do in Hanoi
The short list that earns its place in two or three days, with the honest note on which ones are worth the queue.
Hanoi Travel Guide for First-Timers
Hanoi is a thousand-year-old street plan still working as one. Here is how to read it on a first visit, and what to expect.
The Best Rooftop Bars in Ho Chi Minh City
Which rooftops are worth the price, which view you are actually buying, and when to go up.
Ho Chi Minh City Nightlife: Where to Go
Backpacker street, craft beer district, rooftops and sidewalk beer. Four different evenings, and they do not mix.
Ben Thanh Market: What It Is Good For
Saigon's best-known market is a tourist market, and knowing that is what makes it useful.
Getting Around Ho Chi Minh City
Grab for nearly everything, a new metro line that helps less than you would hope, and a heat that decides more than the map does.
Best Things to Do in Ho Chi Minh City
The short list, led by the two places that will shape the rest of your trip, plus the quieter half of the city most visitors skip.
Ho Chi Minh City Travel Guide for First-Timers
Bigger, hotter and more commercial than Hanoi, and the place the war is hardest to look away from. How to read Saigon on a first visit.
Marble Mountains Guide
Five limestone hills with caves, shrines and a lift, on the road between Da Nang and Hoi An. An hour well spent if you time it.
Ba Na Hills and the Golden Bridge
A French hill station turned mountain-top theme park, reached by a very long cable car. What is actually up there.
Da Nang Travel Guide
A working coastal city with a long beach, an airport and a bridge that breathes fire. What it is for, and what it is not.
Hai Van Pass: How to Cross It
The coastal mountain road between Hue and Da Nang, and the four ways to travel it. One of them you cannot legally do yourself.
Hoi An Tailors: How to Order Clothes That Actually Fit
The industry is real and so is the variance. What to bring, how long it takes, and the questions that separate a good result from a bad one.
Hoi An Travel Guide
An intact trading port, best seen at its quietest hours. What to do, when to do it, and what to ask about the ticket.
Hoi An, An Bang or Da Nang: Where to Base Yourself
Three bases inside an hour of each other that produce three different trips. The choice is less about the places than about what your days look like.
How Many Days Hue Deserves
Three well-known guidebooks give Hue three different answers, from skipping it to two full days. The right number depends on what you came to Vietnam for, and here is the rule.
The DMZ from Hue: What Each Stop Actually Shows You
The DMZ tour from Hue is a long day with a dozen possible stops, and the standard circuit picks them for the driver's convenience. Here is what each one shows, so you can pick for yours.
DMZ and Vinh Moc Tunnels Tour from Hue
A long day north of Hue through the old demilitarised zone. What the stops are, and what the day actually asks of you.
Hue Travel Guide
The imperial capital, a river, royal tombs spread across the countryside, and the food Vietnamese people travel for.
Hue to Hoi An: Train, Car, or the Hai Van Pass
A short leg with several quite different versions, and the cheapest of them is also the best.
Two Days from Hanoi: Boat on Ha Long or Rowboat in Ninh Binh
Most short trips have two days to spend outside Hanoi, and the same limestone scenery is on offer by sea or by river. The choice turns on weather, travel time and what kind of day you want.
Cat Ba Island Guide
The largest island in the Ha Long archipelago, with a national park, a bay of its own and a way of seeing the karsts that is not a cruise.
Ninh Binh Day Trip from Hanoi (Tam Coc and Trang An)
Two hours from Hanoi, karst scenery on rivers instead of sea, and a strong return on a single day of travel.
Getting from Hanoi to Sapa
The expressway changed this journey. The overnight train is no longer the obvious answer.
Best Ha Long Bay Cruise Operators
The operators you will actually be choosing between, what separates the tiers, and how to check a boat is still the one its reviews describe.
Ha Long Bay Day Trip vs Overnight Cruise
A day trip is mostly a coach journey. An overnight cruise is the version people remember. Here is what each one actually costs you.
The Mekong Delta Beyond Can Tho: Vinh Long, Sa Dec, Tram Chim and Chau Doc
The standard delta trip stops at the floating market. A second line of towns runs west to the Cambodian border with homestays, birds, Khmer pagodas and a river crossing, and it is where the delta gets good.
Cai Rang Floating Market: How to See It Properly
A working wholesale market on the water that is finishing by mid-morning. Everything depends on the hour you are on the river.
Mekong Delta Homestays: Which Province, and Why It Matters
A homestay is not a longer tour. It is a different product, and the province you pick decides what you get.
Chau Doc to Cambodia: The Mekong Border Crossing
The boat from the delta up to Phnom Penh is a genuine alternative to flying, and it has one requirement people miss.
Mekong Delta: Day Trip or Overnight?
The packaged day trip out of Ho Chi Minh City and the overnight to Can Tho are not two sizes of the same thing. They are different trips.
Con Dao Islands Guide
A former prison archipelago that is now among the quietest places to reach a beach in Vietnam. Harder to get to, and that is the point.
Mui Ne Guide
Sand dunes, kitesurfing and a fishing village four hours from Ho Chi Minh City. The beach is not the reason to come.
Phu Quoc or Nha Trang: Which Beach?
They are opposite kinds of place with opposite weather. The answer usually comes down to which month you are travelling.
Nha Trang Travel Guide
A city beach, a Russian-language resort economy, Cham towers and some of the best diving in Vietnam. Not everybody's idea of a beach town.
Phu Quoc Travel Guide
Vietnam's largest island, developing fast, with the country's only visa exemption for Americans. What is good and what has been built over.