Vietnam north to south: Hanoi to the Mekong Delta
The full length of the country in three weeks — the northern mountains, Ha Long, the imperial capital, the Hai Van pass and the delta — on trains, sleeper buses and a motorbike loop.
Hanoi
Start in the Old Quarter, where the streets are still named for the guild that worked them — silk, tin, bamboo. Bún chả for lunch, egg coffee somewhere upstairs, and traffic that you cross by walking steadily and never stopping, which is counterintuitive and correct.
Hanoi: the museums and the water puppets
The Vietnamese Women's Museum and the Ethnology Museum are both better than the more-visited alternatives, and the Hỏa Lò prison covers both the French colonial period and its later use. In the evening, the Thăng Long water puppet theatre, which is 1,000 years old and lasts an hour.
North to Hà Giang
A night bus or a day's drive to the far north. Hà Giang town itself is a staging post; the reason to come is the loop through the Đồng Văn karst plateau, a UNESCO geopark of limestone spires along the Chinese border with a road cut through the middle of it.
The Hà Giang loop: Quản Bạ and Yên Minh
Three or four days on a motorbike or with an easy rider driving. The Heaven's Gate pass out of Quản Bạ opens the plateau, and the road climbs through Hmong villages, terraced maize and rock. A licence valid in Vietnam is legally required to ride and insurers enforce it.
Đồng Văn and the Mã Pí Lèng pass
The best road in Vietnam — a ledge cut into a cliff 1,500 metres above the Nho Quế river, with a gorge below that can be run by boat. Lũng Cú flagpole marks the northernmost point of the country. Đồng Văn's Sunday market draws people down from the villages in full dress.
Back to Hanoi and out to the bay
Return south, then east to the coast. Bai Tu Long bay, immediately north of Ha Long, has the same drowned karst with a fraction of the boats — an overnight cruise there is the better choice, and the difference in price is small.
Ninh Bình
The dry Ha Long — the same karst rising out of rice paddies inland. Tam Cốc or Trang An by rowing boat, rowed with the feet, and the Hang Múa steps up to a viewpoint over the whole valley. Bái Đính and the Hoa Lư ancient capital are nearby.
Phong Nha
A night bus south to a karst national park holding some of the largest caves on earth, including Sơn Đoòng — accessible only on a multi-day permit-limited expedition costing several thousand dollars. Paradise Cave and the Phong Nha river cave are open to everyone and are still enormous.
Huế
The Nguyễn imperial capital, with a walled citadel damaged heavily in 1968 and under long restoration, and the royal tombs spread along the Perfume river. Huế food is the most distinctive regional cooking in the country — bún bò Huế, bánh khoái, and a court cuisine that survives in a few restaurants.
The Hai Van pass to Hội An
The coastal pass between Huế and Đà Nẵng, best done by motorbike with your bag sent on — a series of switchbacks above the sea with an abandoned French and American bunker complex at the top. The train alternative runs the same coast at sea level and is one of the great rail rides in Asia.
Hội An
A preserved trading port of Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese buildings, UNESCO-listed, lit with silk lanterns and busy from four in the afternoon. Tailors will make anything in two days. An Bàng beach is fifteen minutes away by bicycle.
My Son and the Cham sites
An hour inland, a Hindu temple complex built by the Cham kingdom between the fourth and fourteenth centuries and bombed heavily in 1969 — the craters are still there next to the towers. The Cham Museum in Đà Nẵng holds the sculpture that was removed.
Đà Lạt
Up into the central highlands — a French hill station at 1,500 metres with pine forest, coffee plantations and a distinctly cooler climate. Canyoning at Datanla and the abandoned railway to Trại Mát are the two things to do; the rest is eating and walking.
Mũi Né or Nha Trang
Down to the coast for two days — Mũi Né has the sand dunes and the kitesurfing, Nha Trang the beach and the Cham towers. Neither is essential and either makes a reasonable break between the highlands and the south.
Ho Chi Minh City
Saigon is louder, richer and faster than Hanoi and the rivalry between them is real. The War Remnants Museum is hard and unflinching and is the single most important thing to see in the city; the Reunification Palace is preserved as it was on 30 April 1975.
The Củ Chi tunnels
An hour and a half northwest, 250 kilometres of hand-dug tunnels used through the war, with a section widened for visitors and a section left at original size that most people cannot get through. Take the Bến Dược site over Bến Đình if you can — fewer coaches.
Into the Mekong Delta: Cần Thơ
Four hours southwest into the delta. The Cái Răng floating market starts at five in the morning and is a working wholesale market rather than a show — boats hang a sample of what they sell from a pole so you can read the market from a distance.
The delta backwaters
Smaller channels by sampan through fruit orchards, coconut candy workshops and rice noodle makers, with a homestay night in Bến Tre or Vĩnh Long. The delta produces more than half of Vietnam's rice and is sinking and salinising, which people will tell you about directly.
Châu Đốc and the Cambodian border
The western delta, with Sam Mountain above the floodplain and a Cham Muslim community along the river. From here a fast boat runs up the Bassac to Phnom Penh in about five hours if the trip continues into Cambodia.
Phú Quốc or back to Saigon
Either the ferry out to Phú Quốc for beaches and a decompression day or two, or straight back to Ho Chi Minh City. Phú Quốc has a separate 30-day visa exemption for all nationalities if arriving directly, which does not apply if you come from the mainland.
Ho Chi Minh City and depart
Back to the city for the flight. A last bánh mì, a last cà phê sữa đá on a plastic stool, and the Bình Tây market in Chợ Lớn if there is a morning to spare.
Dobré vedieť
Most nationalities now use the Vietnamese e-visa, valid 90 days with multiple entry, applied for online through the official immigration portal — use only that site, since the commercial lookalikes charge many times the real fee. Reunification Express trains run the full length of the country and the soft sleeper is comfortable and worth booking a few days ahead; sleeper buses are cheaper, faster and much less pleasant. Domestic flights are inexpensive and remove two long overnight legs if time is tight. Riding a motorbike requires a licence valid in Vietnam — an IDP alone is not accepted for the categories most rentals fall under, and travel insurance is void without it, which matters given that road accidents are the leading cause of serious injury to visitors here. The country runs three climates at once: the north is cold and damp from December to February, the centre floods from September to November, and the south is warm year-round with rain from May to October. There is no single best month for the whole route; March, April and October are the least bad compromises.
Kratšie či dlhšie?
Cutting the northern loop saves five days and the motorbike risk, and Sa Pa offers an easier if far more touristed version of the same landscape two hours from Hanoi by train and bus.
The fast boat from Châu Đốc up the Bassac reaches Phnom Penh in about five hours with the border formalities done on the river — the most pleasant land crossing in the region, and a natural continuation to Angkor.
Hanoi, the bay, Ninh Bình, Huế, Hội An and Saigon with two internal flights covers the classic route. The delta and the far north are what get cut, and they are the two most distinctive parts.