Vietnam Culture and Food Tour 10 Days: Hanoi, Hoi An and Saigon

Your driver waits in the arrivals hall at Noi Bai with a name board and takes you into the city, a run of about 45 minutes along the Red River. The rest of the day is unplanned: sleep off the long flight, or head straight out.

If you do go out, the Old Quarter is the place to start (optional, no extra cost, on your own): a knot of narrow streets north of Hoan Kiem Lake where each street still carries the name of the goods it once sold. Take a lap of the lake as the lights come on, and practise crossing the road at a steady walk; the scooters flow around you as long as you do not stop.

The day belongs to the kitchen. You are collected from the Old Quarter and driven to Ngoc Ha, a neighbourhood market near the Ho Chi Minh complex where Hanoi families do their daily shopping. Your host walks you between the stalls, introduces the vendors she buys from and explains what goes into the basket: fresh rice noodles, herbs by the bunch, fish sauce and the cuts of meat for the day's menu.

Back at the house you cook four of the country's best-known dishes with your own hands, step by step, with welcome drinks and snacks laid on when you arrive. Between courses the hosts sit down to tell the stories behind the food, folk tales and family habits included, and what you have made is eaten together at one table with the hosts and the other guests. Our hosts tell every group the same thing: come hungry.

An early start for the expressway east to Tuan Chau harbour, about two and a half hours' drive from the capital, and the day cruise boat you share with the other guests of the day. The boat sails out among the limestone islands of Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and a hot meal is cooked on board as you go.

The afternoon has three stops. Surprising Cave is a wide chamber of stalactites and stalagmites reached by a short climb. At Titop Island you can go up the steps to the peak for a view across the islands and, in the warmer months, swim off the small beach (optional, no extra cost). Then a kayak or a bamboo rowing boat takes you under the low arch of Luon Cave into the lagoon behind it. Tea and cakes are served on the sun deck as the sun goes down, and the shared bus returns you to Hanoi in the evening.

Coffee is the subject today. A car collects you from the Old Quarter for a workshop that opens with a half-hour talk on how coffee reached Vietnam in the French years and how the country became the second-largest producer in the world. Then you move to the brewing bench for 90 minutes and make five classic Vietnamese coffees yourself, with the instructor correcting your technique as you go.

The session ends at the table with a five-dish set of regional cooking and soft drinks, beer and local wine poured freely. You leave with a printed recipe book, digital copies of the workshop's coffee books and, if you ask for one, a certificate. The afternoon is free. In the evening you can join a three-hour guided street-food walk through the Old Quarter (optional, extra cost), moving from stall to stall as the lanterns come on.

The morning is free in Hanoi before your transfer to Noi Bai; if you have shopping left to do, the Old Quarter's silk, lacquer and coffee shops are a short walk from most central stays (optional, on your own). Your driver then takes you to the airport, and the Hanoi to Da Nang flight takes just over an hour.

At Da Nang airport another driver meets you and takes you down the coast to Hoi An, around 45 minutes, past the long beach that runs between the two towns. The rest of the day is yours. The old town, a UNESCO World Heritage site of merchant houses, Chinese assembly halls and the Japanese Covered Bridge, is at its best in the evening, when the lanterns are lit and the streets by the river are closed to traffic.

You meet the cooking team in the old town for a welcome drink, then walk through Hoi An's central market with the chef, who picks out the fish, the pork, the fresh noodles and the herbs that go into the central Vietnamese dishes you will cook. From the market a boat takes you 25 minutes down the Thu Bon River to the cooking venue, past fishing boats and the palms along the bank.

In the herb garden you learn the aromatics that set the region's food apart, from Vietnamese mint to sawtooth coriander. Then comes two and a half hours at the stove. You make fresh rice paper rolls, the crisp Hoi An pancake, a seafood salad, mi quang chicken noodles and lemongrass beef from the grill, and eat the lot at the end. Recipes and notes go home with you, and a car returns you to the centre.

An early pickup, between 7.30 and 7.45, for the drive inland to the foot of Ba Na Hills. From the base station a cable car carries you more than 11 kilometres up the mountain in a single run, one of the longest non-stop cable car lines in the world, with forest and waterfalls passing below.

At the top the guide sets the order. Le Jardin d'Amour is a series of terraced flower gardens; the Golden Bridge is the walkway held up by two giant stone hands that has become the most photographed spot in central Vietnam; Linh Ung Pagoda keeps the tallest Buddha statue in Vietnam. A meal is served at a restaurant on the mountain, then you walk the French Square, a copy of a French hill village with cobbles and spires. Fantasy Park, an indoor games hall, is there if you want it (optional, extra cost). The cable car brings you down and the shared bus returns to the coast.

Hoi An is left behind mid-morning: your driver runs you north to the airport at Da Nang, 45 minutes away, and from there you fly to Ho Chi Minh City, roughly an hour and twenty minutes. In the south a driver is waiting to bring you into District 1, the old centre that most people still call Saigon, and nothing is booked for the rest of the day.

The two landmarks you pass on the way in, the Independence Palace and the red-brick Notre-Dame Cathedral, are on tomorrow's guided round, so this evening is better spent at street level: a glass of iced tea or a bowl of noodles on Nguyen Hue, the pedestrian boulevard that runs from the city hall down to the river, with the whole of Saigon out walking after dark.

An English-speaking guide collects you from your stay in District 1 for a morning of the city's history. The Independence Palace comes first, the seat of the South Vietnamese government until April 1975 and kept as it was then, with the command bunker in the basement. You pass the Notre-Dame Cathedral, seen from outside, to the Central Post Office, the iron-framed hall from the French years, and end at the War Remnants Museum, with aircraft and tanks in the yard.

The afternoon is free. In the early evening you watch a water puppet show, the thousand-year-old theatre of the northern rice fields in which lacquered puppets act out legends on a pool of water. A transfer then takes you to the harbour for a cruise on the Saigon River aboard the Indochina Queen, a traditional-style boat, with a set menu of Vietnamese dishes as the city lights slide past, and you are dropped back at your stay afterwards.

The tour ends at Tan Son Nhat airport, and the hours before your transfer are yours. Two suggestions from our team, both optional and at your own cost: a last turn through a local market for dried fruit, coffee beans and packable souvenirs, or a slow coffee at a pavement café the way Saigon starts every day, strong, with condensed milk, over ice.

Your driver takes you from District 1 to the airport, about 30 to 45 minutes depending on the traffic. If you would like more of the south, a day or two on the Mekong Delta or a few nights on the beach at Phu Quoc can be added before you fly; ask when you book.