Affordable Vietnam Tour 11 Days: Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An and Saigon

Our driver waits for you in the arrivals hall at Noi Bai and brings you across the Red River into the centre, roughly three quarters of an hour with normal traffic. The first day has no programme, so sleep off the flight or go out and look around: the Old Quarter's 36 trade streets are close, and so is Train Street, the narrow lane where houses stand an arm's length from the rails.

After dark there is the option of a street-food walk with a local guide (optional, extra cost): half a dozen dishes tasted at pavement stalls, pho, banh mi and bun cha among them, finished with a Vietnamese coffee, and you are collected and returned within the Old Quarter.

Ninh Binh lies some two hours by road south of Hanoi, a country of limestone peaks standing in flooded rice fields. On arrival you swap the car for a bicycle and pedal 20 minutes to Hoa Lu, seat of the Vietnamese kings in the tenth century, to see the temples of King Dinh and King Le, then ride another half hour along village lanes between the paddies. A seat on the bus is there for anyone who would rather not cycle.

Next comes a rowing boat, and you choose which: Tam Coc, about an hour and a half through the rice fields and three low caves, or Trang An, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape with a longer loop through tunnel caves. The day ends with the Mua Cave climb, roughly 500 steps up Lying Dragon Mountain to a view over the whole Tam Coc valley, before the drive back to Hanoi.

An express shuttle bus collects you in Hanoi for the two and a half hour run to the Ha Long pier, where you board Cozy Bay Cruise and sail out among the islands. The first stop is Surprise Cave, a huge chamber of stalactites inside one of the karst pillars. Next comes Luon Cave, by kayak or by bamboo boat: you pass under its rock arch and out into the enclosed lagoon behind it.

At Titop Island you can climb to the viewpoint on the summit or stay on the small beach; a swim is possible when the season and the weather allow (optional). As the light goes the crew lays out red wine, tea, cakes, prawn crackers and fruit on the sundeck, and the boat drops anchor in a quiet corner of the bay for the night.

The morning begins on the water: the boat threads back through the islands while the bay is still flat, and an early meal is served before you go ashore. The shuttle then takes you directly to Noi Bai, not back into the city, for the flight south to Hue, which takes a little over an hour.

Hue was the imperial capital under the Nguyen dynasty from 1802 to 1945 and is a quieter, smaller city than Hanoi. Our driver meets you at Phu Bai airport, about 15 kilometres out, and the rest of the afternoon is free. In the evening you eat at Madam Thu 2, a restaurant known for the small dishes of the old royal kitchen.

The day opens on the Perfume River in a dragon boat, the painted wooden craft of the city, which carries you upstream to Thien Mu Pagoda and its seven-storey tower above the bank. Back in the centre you walk the Imperial Citadel, the walled compound where the Nguyen court sat, through its gates, courtyards and the ruins of the palaces, and call at Dong Ba Market, the main trading hall of Hue.

In the afternoon the car heads into the hills south of the city for two royal tombs: Minh Mang, laid out around lakes and pine woods, and Khai Dinh, a concrete and mosaic building on a hillside that mixes Vietnamese and European styles. On the way you stop in a village where families make conical hats and roll incense sticks.

The road south from Hue runs along the coast and then climbs the Hai Van Pass, the ridge that separates the north of Vietnam from the south in weather as much as in geography. The pass tops out at around 500 metres, and from the old gate at the summit you look down on the bays on both sides before the hairpins drop towards Da Nang. Your driver can stop for photographs where the view opens up.

From Da Nang it is another half hour to Hoi An. Cars are kept out of the old town, a merchant port since the sixteenth century that UNESCO lists as a World Heritage site, and the afternoon is free for its yellow shophouses, the Japanese bridge and the lantern-lit lanes beside the river.

A whole day with no programme. The one fixed point is a midday meal at Ngon Pho Hoi, a restaurant in an old timber house at 21 La Hoi that serves dishes from the centre of the country. Around it the day is yours.

Most guests hire a bicycle and ride the flat five kilometres out to the beach, where the sea is warm and calm for much of the year, and sit at one of the beachside cafés with a fresh fruit drink (optional, extra cost). The other Hoi An habit is the tailors: hundreds of shops make suits, dresses and shirts to measure, and many can finish an order by the next day, so this is the day to place one.

Your driver collects you for the 45-minute run up the coast to Da Nang airport, and the flight to Ho Chi Minh City takes around an hour and twenty minutes. Tan Son Nhat sits inside the city, so the transfer to the centre is short.

Saigon, as everyone still calls it, is a different country from Hanoi: wider streets, more traffic, more glass and more heat. Nothing more is scheduled today. Most of the sights of District 1 sit within walking distance of each other, the Notre Dame cathedral, the Central Post Office, the Reunification Palace and Ben Thanh Market, and the rooftop bars along Nguyen Hue are the usual place for a first evening.

A van collects you in the centre for the drive out to Cu Chi, about 60 kilometres north-west, where the Viet Cong carved a tunnel network of well over 200 kilometres out of the hard clay. The visit opens with a short documentary on how it was dug and lived in, and your guide then leads you across the site: the trapdoors hidden under leaves, the living quarters, the kitchens with their smoke led away underground, and the command posts.

You can crawl through a section widened for visitors, and the visit ends with tea and boiled cassava, the staple the fighters lived on. A shooting range on the site lets you fire a few rounds (optional, extra cost). The van has you back in the centre around the middle of the day, and the afternoon is yours.

The bus leaves Saigon for My Tho, about two hours south-west on the Tien River, one of the two great branches the Mekong splits into before the sea. You start at Vinh Trang Pagoda, with its giant Buddha statues in the garden, then board a motor boat for the crossing past the four islands, known locally as Dragon, Unicorn, Phoenix and Tortoise.

The landing is on Unicorn Island, for a walk along orchard lanes with fruit of the season to taste, a family that keeps bees, and a small sweet factory where the coconut candy is cooked, rolled and wrapped in front of you. Two women then row you in a sampan down Thoi Son Canal beneath the water-coconut palms. The afternoon offers a bicycle loop of Tan Thach Village, or a hammock for those who prefer, and the boat and bus return you to Saigon.

Your last morning in Vietnam is your own until the driver arrives for the airport run. If your flight leaves late in the day there is time for last souvenirs at the markets near the centre (optional, on your own): Ben Thanh for coffee, dried fruit and lacquer, or the smaller stalls on the streets around it.

The run to Tan Son Nhat takes 20 to 40 minutes depending on the traffic, and the tour ends at the terminal. If you want more of the south, a day on Phu Quoc or another night in the city can be added when you book.