Essential Vietnam Tour 10 Days: Hanoi, Ha Long, Hoi An, Saigon

Once you are through immigration and customs, your driver is waiting in the arrivals hall at Noi Bai for the 45-minute drive into central Hanoi in a private vehicle.

Nothing else is planned today. With an early landing, the Old Quarter and Hoan Kiem Lake are close by and easy to walk on your own (optional, no extra cost). The guided round of the city is tomorrow, so the first evening is for a bowl of pho and an early night.

Your guide collects you for a full day across the capital, with the car moving you between stops. First is Tran Quoc Pagoda on its islet in West Lake, the oldest in the city and dating from the sixth century. The Ho Chi Minh complex follows: the mausoleum square, the stilt house and the One Pillar Pagoda, a single wooden shrine raised on a stone column, first built in the eleventh century and rebuilt after 1954.

You then choose between the Museum of Ethnology, with its park of full-size minority houses, and the Vietnamese Women's Museum in the centre. After the Temple of Literature, Vietnam's first university, the last stop is Hoa Lo, the colonial prison that later held captured American pilots. For the evening you can add a 45-minute cyclo ride round the Old Quarter streets, a water puppet show, or both in one outing (optional, extra cost).

You leave Hanoi after the morning rush and reach the coast at Ha Long in roughly two and a half hours via the expressway. At the pier you board the cruise boat and it sets off among the limestone islands, nearly 2,000 of them, that make the bay a UNESCO World Heritage site. The karst slides past the windows as you sail.

The afternoon stops are a cave inside one of the islands, lit so you can walk its chambers, and a kayak or a swim near one of the floating villages where families still live on the water. The evening follows the programme of the boat that day, which changes from one departure to the next (on-board activities, no extra cost). You sleep in a cabin, anchored in a quiet corner of the bay.

The boat is moving again soon after sunrise, cruising through a different part of the bay on its way to a floating fishing village, where the houses sit on rafts and the catch is kept in net pens beneath them. You are back at the pier before midday.

From there it is a long travelling day, but every leg is arranged: the drive back to Hanoi, the flight from Noi Bai to Da Nang, about an hour and a quarter in the air, and the 45-minute transfer down the coast to Hoi An. You arrive with the evening free. The old town is a few minutes away and the tailors and lantern shops stay open late, so a first wander and some shopping are easy to fit in on your own (optional, no extra cost).

The old town of Hoi An is a UNESCO World Heritage site and small enough to see on foot, so the car stays parked. Your guide starts at the central market by the river, then takes you into Phuc Kien Assembly Hall, built by the town's Fujian traders, and one of the old family houses, Phung Hung or Tan Ky, where the same families have lived for generations behind the shopfronts. The Museum of Folk Culture shows how the port once worked.

From there you walk to the Japanese Bridge, the covered footbridge from the sixteenth century that is the symbol of the town. After dark you step into a boat on the Thu Bon, light a paper flower lantern and set it on the water, the Hoi An custom for making a wish.

My Son is about 40 kilometres inland from Hoi An, a valley of brick temple towers built by the Cham kings between the fourth and thirteenth centuries and now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The guide leads you through the groups of ruins, explaining the Hindu gods carved on the walls, the bricks laid without visible mortar and the bomb craters from 1969 that destroyed part of the complex. The site has little shade, so the visit is made early and a hat and water are worth bringing.

An Apsara dance performance, in the style of the old Cham court, is part of the visit. The return to Hoi An is made partly by boat along the Thu Bon River, past the fishing nets of the villages on its banks, and the afternoon is yours in the old town.

No guide today: it is the move from the centre to the south. A driver collects you in Hoi An for Da Nang airport, about 45 minutes away, and the Ho Chi Minh City flight takes around 80 minutes in the air; another driver meets you at Tan Son Nhat for the ride into District 1.

Nothing is scheduled after that. The guided round of the centre and Cu Chi is tomorrow, so good uses of a loose afternoon are the places not on that list: Ben Thanh Market for a first look at southern food, the shophouses and temples of Cho Lon, the city's Chinatown, or the War Remnants Museum, which many visitors say is the most affecting hour of their trip (all optional, on your own, at your own cost).

The guided day in the south begins in the old French quarter of District 1. Notre Dame Cathedral, finished in 1880 with bricks shipped from Toulouse, stands opposite the Central Post Office, whose iron frame and painted wall maps date from the same decade. A short drive away is Reunification Palace, kept much as it was when a North Vietnamese tank came through the gates on 30 April 1975.

You then drive about an hour and a half northwest to the Cu Chi Tunnels, part of a network of more than 200 kilometres dug by guerrilla fighters beneath the forest. The guide shows the hidden trapdoors, the air vents disguised as termite mounds and the underground workshops. A section of tunnel has been widened for visitors and you can crawl through it if you feel comfortable in a tight space (optional, no extra cost). Afterwards you taste boiled cassava with sesame salt, the food that kept the fighters going.

The Mekong day starts with the drive southwest to My Tho, about two hours from the city, and a first stop at Vinh Trang Pagoda, a nineteenth-century temple that mixes Vietnamese, Khmer and French details. At the quay you board a motor boat and cross the river past the four islands the locals named Dragon, Unicorn, Phoenix and Tortoise.

On Unicorn Island the hours run at delta pace: a plate of seasonal fruit while a family group plays southern folk songs, a walk through an orchard, honey tea at a bee farm and a coconut candy workshop where the sweets are rolled and wrapped by hand. A rowed sampan carries you down the narrow Thoi Son canal under water-coconut palms, then there is an easy bicycle ride through Tan Thach village; anyone who would rather not pedal gets a hammock under the trees instead. The car has you back in Saigon by early evening.

Nothing is planned on the final morning. Your driver comes at a time set by your departure, and the run from District 1 to Tan Son Nhat takes about half an hour outside the rush hour. With a late departure you could fit in a coffee on a balcony above the traffic or a final pass through Ben Thanh Market for coffee beans and dried fruit to carry home (optional, on your own).

If you would like more of the south, extra nights in Saigon can be added when you book, and we set the transfer to match your flight.