1 Week in Vietnam: 7 Days from Saigon to Ha Long and Mai Chau

Your driver meets you in the arrivals hall at Tan Son Nhat, holding a sign with your name, and drives you to your hotel in the centre. Rooms are ready from 2:00 PM, and reception keeps your bags if you arrive before then.

The evening is yours. Saigon's street food is the easiest first taste of the city, and the bars and rooftops fill up after dark (both optional, at your own cost). Saigon runs on motorbikes, so take your first road crossings at a slow, steady pace and the riders will flow around you.

Today is free, with two optional tours you can add at extra cost. The city tour links the French-built landmarks a short walk apart: Notre Dame Cathedral, the Central Post Office and the Reunification Palace, kept much as it was in April 1975.

The other option is the Cu Chi Tunnels northwest of the city, a network of underground passages used during the war, where your guide explains how people lived and fought in them. Both can be combined into one long day.

Your guide collects you at 8:00 AM for the drive of about two hours south to My Tho on the Tien River, the northern arm of the Mekong. A boat takes you across to the river islands, where the canals are shaded by water palms and the orchards come down to the bank.

On the islands you watch coconut candy being made by hand and stop at a bee farm for honey tea. Back on the mainland you visit Vinh Trang Pagoda, then drive back to Ho Chi Minh City. A driver takes you to Tan Son Nhat for the flight north, about two hours in the air, and another driver meets you in Hanoi for the ride to your hotel.

Between 8:30 and 9:00 AM a van or bus picks you up from the hotel. The road east to Ha Long City takes about three and a half hours, crossing farmland and rice fields, and at the pier you board a traditional wooden junk to sail out among the limestone islands of the bay.

The afternoon brings a cave visit and a swim off the boat in a sheltered spot. The junk anchors for the night, and the deck is the place to be as the sun goes down behind the karst. Night swimming in the phosphorescent water is optional and paid separately, when conditions allow.

Set an alarm for sunrise over the bay, the quietest hour on the water. The junk then cruises slowly between the islands, with time for photos, and stops at a traditional floating fishing village, where families still live on rafts and keep fish in pens beneath them.

From the harbour the van or bus heads back to Hanoi, and you are in the city by about 3:30 to 4:00 PM. The evening is free for the Old Quarter: its shops, its lanes and its street food (optional, at your own cost).

At 8:30 AM the car leaves Hanoi heading southwest into the hills of Hoa Binh province, pausing for coffee or tea at about 10:30 AM. The road climbs out of the delta and the valley opens below the last pass, a flat floor of rice fields ringed by limestone hills. You arrive around noon.

In the afternoon your guide walks you through a Muong village, where the stilt houses stand at the edge of the fields, then up West Hill for a view over the whole valley. At 7:00 PM a traditional dance performance rounds off the day.

At 9:00 AM your guide sets off along the East Mountain route, a gentle walk that suits any fitness level, with the valley in view the whole way: the villages, the river and the road you came in on. You are back by about 11:00 AM to rest and pack.

The drive back to Hanoi starts at 1:30 PM. You are dropped in the Old Quarter at about 5:00 PM and the tour ends there. If you ask when booking, we can arrange a transfer to Noi Bai Airport or extra nights in the city.