Vietnam 7 Day Itinerary: Hanoi, Ninh Binh, Ha Long Bay to Saigon

A driver collects you at Noi Bai and brings you into the city, about 45 minutes on the new expressway. Nothing is scheduled after that, which is deliberate: the first day of a week in Vietnam is for shaking off the flight.

If you have energy, walk the streets near your stay. The Old Quarter is a knot of narrow lanes around Hoan Kiem Lake where each street once sold one trade, and the pavements fill with low plastic stools and bowls of pho from late afternoon. Eat where the locals queue, keep small notes for the bill, and be in bed early for tomorrow.

You drive south out of Hanoi for about two hours to Ninh Binh province. The first stop is Hoa Lu, the capital of the country in the tenth century before the court moved north. Two temples stand on the old site, one to King Dinh Tien Hoang and one to King Le Dai Hanh, and your guide explains how a valley shut in by limestone made a defensible seat for a young state.

After a midday meal at a local restaurant you go to Trang An, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape since 2014. A rower takes you in a flat wooden boat along a chain of rivers and through low caves cut under the hills, some so low you duck in your seat. Towards evening the car returns you to Hanoi.

The morning is the drive east to the Ha Long pier, roughly two and a half hours. You board your cruise boat and the first meal is served while it sails out among the limestone islands, nearly two thousand of them standing in green water. The crew set a slow pace, with time on the upper deck to watch the rocks go by.

In the afternoon the boat anchors for a visit to one of the bay's caves and a stop in calm water where you can take out a kayak or swim from the boat. The evening meal is on board as the light goes. The crew run their own programme later in the evening (optional, extra cost), or you can sit out and watch the lights of the other boats at anchor.

You wake on the water with the islands around the boat. The cruise then moves on to a floating fishing village, where families keep their houses and fish pens on rafts and children go to school by boat, before it sails back towards the pier around midday.

The shuttle brings you back to Hanoi, arriving around 3:30 to 4:00 PM, and a driver takes you straight on to Noi Bai Airport for the flight to Ho Chi Minh City, roughly two hours in the air. At Tan Son Nhat another driver is waiting with your name on a sign and takes you into central Saigon. The ticket, with 20 kg of checked luggage, is in the price, so your only job today is to keep the passport handy. The evening is free in the city.

A drive of around two hours takes you southwest to My Tho, a river town on the Tien, one of the branches the Mekong splits into before it reaches the sea. You begin at Vinh Trang Pagoda, a nineteenth-century temple with a garden of huge white Buddha statues, then board a boat for a loop past four islands named after sacred animals (Dragon, Unicorn, Phoenix and Tortoise).

Landing on Unicorn Island, you follow lanes between the orchards, taste whatever fruit is ripe and sit for a short performance of southern folk songs by local residents. A hand-rowed sampan then carries you along Thoi Son canal under a roof of water palms to a family honeybee farm and a workshop where coconut candy is boiled and cut by hand. Later you pick between a bicycle ride round Tan Thach village and time in a hammock, both part of the day, before the boat and the car take you back to Saigon.

The Cu Chi Tunnels lie about an hour and a half northwest of the city, a network of passages dug by hand that at its peak ran for more than 200 km. The visit opens with a short documentary and your guide's introduction, then you walk the site above ground to see the trapdoor entrances, air vents hidden in termite mounds and the traps set around them.

Below ground the restored sections show kitchens with their smoke channels, bedrooms, store rooms, a weapons workshop, a field hospital and a command post. You can crawl a stretch of tunnel or skip it; our guides tell guests to leave bags in the car for this part, because you need both hands. The visit ends as it did for the people who lived here, with green tea and boiled cassava. A shooting range on site is open to eligible visitors (optional, extra cost). You are back in Saigon by mid afternoon.

Your last morning is unscheduled until the driver comes for the airport run, which takes 30 to 45 minutes in daytime traffic. Use the time for a walk through the streets around your stay, a last Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk, or a market for souvenirs: ground coffee, dried fruit and lacquerware all travel well.

If your flight leaves late, tell us and we will set the pickup to match. We can also extend the trip with extra nights in Saigon, a guided day in the city or some beach days on the coast before your flight home.