Vietnam 8 Day Itinerary: Hanoi, Ninh Binh, the bay, Hoi An and Hue

Around 50,000 dong to enter the temple, 1 hour, 45 minutes from the airport by taxi. It is the city's zero point and the easiest place to begin.

Hoan Kiem means lake of the returned sword, after the legend in which emperor Le Loi received a magic sword from a turtle to drive out the Chinese and gave it back here after the victory. Inside Ngoc Son Temple, on an islet joined to the bank by the red The Huc bridge, sits a giant lake turtle, preserved, which died in 2016.

Early in the morning the lakeside turns into an open air gym, with hundreds of people doing tai chi before 7am.

No ticket, 90 minutes, five minutes on foot from the lake. Go at dusk, which is when the quarter switches on.

The 36 streets of the Old Quarter began as guilds, and each name still opens with Hang, meaning merchandise: Hang Bac is the silver street, Hang Gai the silk one, Hang Ma the paper one. Many keep their specialty to this day, which makes the walk read like an index.

Crossing the road here is alarming the first time. The local rule is to walk slowly and in a straight line, without stopping or running: the motorbikes flow around anyone who is predictable.

Free entry, 90 minutes, open only from 7.30am to 10.30am and closed Mondays and Fridays. That window is the whole reason the day starts here.

Ho Chi Minh asked in his will to be cremated, and the government did the opposite: the body was embalmed and has been on display since 1975 in a granite mausoleum on Ba Dinh Square, where he declared independence in 1945. The queue moves fast, but the rules are strict: silence, no photographs, no shorts, no hands in pockets.

Around 70,000 dong, 90 minutes, 15 minutes on foot from the mausoleum.

Founded in 1070 as a Confucian temple and expanded six years later with the Quoc Tu Giam, Vietnam's first university, it trained mandarins for 700 years. In the inner courtyards stand 82 stone stelae resting on turtles, each carved with the names of those who passed the imperial exams between 1442 and 1779. It is the 100,000 dong note in your pocket.

A 20-minute stop, no ticket, with one important caveat: check the day's train times and stay off the tracks.

The Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh line cuts through the old town along an alley where the houses stand less than a metre from the rails, and the cafes put stools out between one passage and the next. Authorities have closed the street several times on safety grounds since 2019, and access varies: sometimes you can only enter as a cafe customer, sometimes there is a barrier. Treat it as a photo stop, not a guaranteed plan.

Around 50,000 dong, 90 minutes, 10 minutes on foot. It is the hardest visit of the day and worth the full time.

The French built the Maison Centrale in 1896 for Vietnamese political prisoners, and most of the museum is about that: collective cells with ankle shackles, the original guillotine, photographs of the executed. The final wing covers the American pilots held here between 1964 and 1973, who nicknamed it the Hanoi Hilton, and which the exhibition presents in conditions notably gentler than their own accounts describe. Read it knowing that.

Around 250,000 dong for the boat, 3 hours, 2 hours from Hanoi. Leave at 7am and bring sunscreen: there is no shade on the boat.

Trang An is a World Heritage Site and the trip is by rowing boat, almost always steered by local women, many of them rowing with their feet. The circuit passes through nine caves cut into the limestone by water, some so low that everyone has to duck, and calls at temples in the middle of nowhere. It takes three hours and there is no shortening it once you are aboard.

A common choice is between Trang An and Tam Coc, right next door. Tam Coc is shorter and at its best at harvest, in May and June, but Trang An has the caves and far fewer vendors approaching the boat.

Around 100,000 dong, 2 hours, 15 minutes from Trang An. It is roughly 500 uneven stone steps to the top.

The climb is short but hard, and what waits at the top is the image that made Ninh Binh famous: the Ngo Dong river winding between rice paddies and limestone towers, with a dragon statue on the summit. Go late in the afternoon, when the heat eases and the light comes in sideways. Rubber soles help, because the steps are worn and slippery.

It is a 2 hour 30 minute van ride from Hanoi to the port, and a one-night cruise costs 120 to 250 dollars per person, all inclusive. Boarding is around 12.30pm.

Sung Sot means surprise, and the name came from the French explorer who found it in 1901. There are three linked chambers, the largest with a 30-metre ceiling, lit with coloured floodlights that divide opinion. It is the most visited cave in the bay and the standard stop for almost every boat, which means you will share it with a good number of people around 3pm.

Included in the cruise, the rest of the afternoon and the night. This is where the choice of boat matters more than the comfort of the cabin.

Bai Tu Long is the neighbouring bay, with the same limestone karst rising out of the water, and it takes a fraction of the boats because it requires a separate licence. The difference is concrete: in Ha Long it is normal to anchor beside dozens of vessels, while in Bai Tu Long the night mooring usually holds three or four. When booking, confirm in writing that the itinerary is in Bai Tu Long, because many agencies sell Ha Long under that name.

The boat docks around 11am, the van returns to Hanoi and the flight to Da Nang takes 1 hour 20. Da Nang to Hoi An is 45 minutes by car. Ancient town ticket around 120,000 dong, 2 hours.

Hoi An was the main port of Southeast Asia between the 16th and 18th centuries, with Japanese, Chinese and Dutch communities, and declined when the river silted up and trade moved to Da Nang. That decline is what preserved it: with no money to demolish and rebuild, the town crossed the twentieth century almost intact and became a World Heritage Site in 1999.

The ticket admits you to five of the historic houses and temples, your choice, and it is worth using on the family houses, like Tan Ky, which are still lived in by the descendants.

A 20-minute stop, included in the ancient town ticket. Go after dark, when the lanterns come on.

The covered bridge was built in 1593 by the Japanese community to link their quarter to the Chinese one across the canal, and it holds a small temple in the middle, dedicated to a god of weather. It went through a full restoration between 2022 and 2024 that drew local criticism for looking too new. It is the image on the 20,000 dong note.

Around 40,000 dong plus 15,000 for the lift, 2 hours 30, 20 minutes from Hoi An on the way to Da Nang. Go early: after 10am the heat inside the caves is considerable.

These are five marble and limestone hills, each named after an element, and the one you visit is Thuy Son, the water hill. Inside it are caves holding pagodas and Buddhist altars, among them Huyen Khong, which has an opening in the roof that lets a shaft of light in at midday. During the war the Viet Cong used these caves as a field hospital, a few kilometres from an American base.

Around 900,000 dong for the Ba Na Hills ticket with cable car, 4 hours, 1 hour from Da Nang. Go in the afternoon, after 3pm, when the coach parties start heading down.

The cable car climbs 1,400 metres in 20 minutes and once held the world record for height gain on a single line. The Golden Bridge, opened in 2018, is 150 metres long and held up by two giant stone hands deliberately aged to look centuries old. The rest of the complex is a theme park with a stage-set French village, which tends to divide people: go for the bridge and the view, knowing what else is up there.

Around 200,000 dong, 2 hours 30, 2 hours from Da Nang. If you can, take the Hai Van Pass rather than the tunnel: it is 20 minutes longer and the best coastal road in the country.

Hue was the capital of Vietnam from 1802 to 1945, under the thirteen emperors of the Nguyen dynasty, and the Imperial City is a walled citadel 10 kilometres around with a Purple Forbidden City inside, copied from Beijing. Of the 160 original buildings, around 10 remain: the Tet Offensive turned Hue into a battlefield for 26 days in 1968. Restoration has been continuous since the 1990s and it shows, with rebuilt pavilions standing beside ruins left as they were.

Free entry, 45 minutes, 10 minutes by car from the citadel, upriver along the Perfume River.

The octagonal seven-storey tower, from 1844, became the symbol of Hue, and each level represents one reincarnation of Buddha. At the back of the complex sits the blue Austin in which the monk Thich Quang Duc travelled to Saigon in 1963, where he burned himself in protest at the persecution of Buddhists. The photograph of that act went around the world and is one of the images that changed the Western reading of the war.

Around 150,000 dong, 1 hour, 20 minutes south. Of the imperial tombs, it is the one that most surprises anyone expecting traditional architecture.

Khai Dinh reigned from 1916 to 1925 under French tutelage and had his own tomb built in reinforced concrete, mixing European baroque, gothic and Vietnamese styles, which earned him harsh criticism from his contemporaries. The main hall is covered floor to ceiling in mosaics made of broken porcelain and glass, and the gilded bronze statue of the emperor sits above his body, 18 metres below.

No ticket, 2 hours, 10 minutes from central Da Nang. The sea is calmest from May to August.

It runs about ten kilometres of broad sand between the water and a line of new towers, and it was here that American marines landed in March 1965, the first deployment of combat troops. The soldiers called it China Beach, a name that stuck in the West and that Vietnamese people do not use. Today it is an ordinary city beach, with people swimming before 7am and after 5pm, and empty in the middle of the day because of the heat.

A 20-minute stop, no ticket, on the way to the airport, which is 10 minutes away.

The bridge is 666 metres long and shaped as a golden dragon, the animal that stands for power and prosperity here, and it opened in 2013 on the 38th anniversary of the city's liberation. By day it is simply a large bridge. What earns its reputation happens on Saturdays and Sundays at 9pm, when the dragon's head breathes fire and then water for about 15 minutes. If your flight is at night and falls on a weekend, it is worth arranging to see.