Vietnam Craft Village Tour, 6 Days: Hanoi Workshops and Ninh Binh

Look for our driver holding a card with your name just past customs at Noi Bai; the drive into the city takes about 45 minutes once you are clear of the airport roads. The rest of the day is unplanned on purpose, because arrivals from Europe and North America tend to land tired.

If you have energy left, the Old Quarter is a short walk from your stay (optional, on your own, no extra cost). Pick a street, Hang Gai for silk or Hang Ma for paper goods, follow it to the lake and sit down for a cold drink on a plastic stool. Tomorrow starts with coffee, so there is no need to rush anything tonight.

A short transfer takes you from the Old Quarter to a roastery in Ba Dinh district, where a barista walks you through how Vietnam became the world's second-largest coffee grower and why the robusta bean and the metal phin filter shape the taste. Then it is your turn at the bench: roasting, grinding and brewing, with the equipment laid out for you and the first snacks already on the table.

You make five drinks in the session: egg coffee, coconut coffee, the salted coffee that started in Hue, a traditional brown coffee with condensed milk, and either a pour-over or a coffee cocktail. You leave with a recipe book, digital copies of the shop's coffee books and, if you ask, a certificate. Our team's tip: the egg coffee is the one guests most often manage to repeat at home.

Agarwood is the dark, scented resin that Aquilaria trees produce when they are wounded, and for centuries it has been burned in temples and carved into beads across Asia. The day at the workshop begins with a talk on that history and on how the trees are now cultivated and harvested so that wild stocks are left alone.

The makers then show the extraction step by step and lay out the different grades, teaching you to tell the oily, heavy pieces from the lighter ones by sight and smell. Around midday you eat a vegetarian meal in the Buddhist style at the same table as the workshop staff, and the afternoon closes with a tea ceremony using agar-infused and herbal teas. Agar milk tea, herbal tea and agar coffee tastings are offered on top (optional, extra cost).

Today the guide takes you around the capital by car. First is Tran Quoc Pagoda, on its West Lake island since the sixth century, then the Ho Chi Minh complex: the mausoleum from the outside (when it is not closed), the grounds, his stilt houses, and the One Pillar Pagoda, a wooden shrine on a single stone column over a pond.

Depending on the weekday, the morning museum is either the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology or the Vietnamese Women's Museum. The afternoon covers the courtyards of the Temple of Literature, a Confucian academy from the eleventh century, and the cells of Hoa Lo, the prison the French built in the 1890s. After Hoa Lo you can add a cyclo ride through the Old Quarter, a water puppet show, or both back to back (optional, extra cost).

You leave Hanoi early by road for Ninh Binh, where the delta meets a landscape of limestone towers, about two hours south. The first stop is Hoa Lu, seat of the Dinh and early Le kings from 968 until the court left for Thang Long, today's Hanoi, in 1010. Two temples there honour King Dinh and King Le, and the carved beams and stone yards reward a slow look.

After the meal break you board a rowing boat at Trang An, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape, and are rowed along a green waterway between the karsts and through three caves in turn: Sang (the light cave), Toi (the dark cave) and Nau Ruou (the cooking-wine cave), ducking as the roof drops. The route also passes the island set built for Kong: Skull Island in 2017. You return to Hanoi by road in the late afternoon.

The last morning is yours until the transfer. Three things people tend to do with it (optional, extra cost): a final walk through the Old Quarter now that you know the streets, a round of shopping for keepsakes such as the phin filter and beans you brewed with on day two, and one more egg coffee in a cafe of your choosing.

When it is time, the car collects you for the run out to Noi Bai and your onward flight. A late departure, or an appetite for more of the north, is easily handled: mention it when booking and we extend the stay in Hanoi or slot in a day trip at either end.