Hanoi Halong Bay Tour: 3 Days of Coffee, Caves and Street Food

The trip starts at our Hanoi coffee workshop, a class led by Local Beans Roastery, the coffee brand Sondax runs itself. A local barista tells the story of coffee in Vietnam, then you brew six drinks yourself and taste each one: salt, egg, coconut and brown coffee, a pour-over and a coffee cocktail. Egg coffee was created in Hanoi in the 1940s, when milk was scarce and egg yolk whipped with sugar took its place.

In the evening your guide takes you to the Old Quarter’s beer street around Ta Hien. Bia hoi is a light draught beer brewed fresh every day and poured straight from the keg, and Hanoians drink it on low plastic stools at the edge of the pavement, so it is easy to start a conversation with the next table.

The road east to the coast is roughly 170 km of expressway, a drive of around two and a half hours. Ha Long Bay has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1994, with about 1,600 limestone islands and islets, and you spend about six hours on the water aboard a five-star day cruise. The first stop is Sung Sot, the Surprise Cave, where a path of about half a kilometre leads through two chambers hung with stalactites.

Close by, Luon Cave is a low tunnel through the rock into a lagoon closed in by cliffs, and you go through by kayak or in a bamboo boat with a local rower. On Titop Island you choose between a swim from its small beach and the climb to the viewpoint over the bay. On the way back to the harbour the crew sets up a sunset party on deck with wine and soft music. Expect to be back in Hanoi late in the evening.

The last day starts on the hop-on hop-off bus, which loops past the Opera House, the Old Quarter, the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long, Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Temple of Literature. Next is Hoa Lo Prison, which the French built in the late 19th century to hold Vietnamese political prisoners. From 1964 to 1973 it held captured American pilots, who called it the Hanoi Hilton.

Then comes a street food walk through small local eateries, where your guide does the ordering and explains what is in each bowl. The tour ends at a café on Train Street, where the railway passes a metre from the front doors. The track has been closed to sightseers since 2019 and access can change, so you stay seated in the café, never on the rails.