Met at Noi Bai and driven the forty-five minutes into the Old Quarter, where we stay two nights. Nothing is scheduled. If you land in the morning, the lake at Hoan Kiem is a five-minute walk and the streets around it are closed to traffic at weekends. Your leader briefs the group over a drink in the evening.

On foot through the Old Quarter’s thirty-six guild streets, then the Temple of Literature, a Confucian academy founded in 1070 and the country’s first university. After lunch the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and the stilt house behind it, and the Museum of Ethnology out in Cau Giay, which is the best thing in the city and the least visited. Dinner together.

South on the expressway, ninety minutes now that it is finished. Hoa Lu was the capital under the Dinh and early Le, from 968 to 1010, and two small temples remain on the site. In the afternoon a sampan through the Trang An caves, rowed by women who work them in rotation, and the 500 steps up Hang Mua for the view over the flooded fields. Night in Ninh Binh.

Three and a half hours east to Hai Phong and out to Cat Ba, where we board for the night. Lan Ha holds the same drowned limestone as Ha Long but sits in the quieter half of it, and the boat anchors away from the main channel. Kayaking in the afternoon if the water is calm, swimming off the deck, and dinner aboard.

Breakfast on deck while the boat works back through the islands, ashore by late morning, and back in Hanoi by mid-afternoon. Rooms are held for showers and bags. In the evening we board the southbound Reunification Express at Hanoi station for Hue — thirteen to fourteen hours in four-berth soft sleepers, which is how Vietnamese families have always covered this distance.

Into Hue between eight and nine in the morning. Breakfast, check in, and an hour to yourselves before the Imperial City, seat of the Nguyen emperors from 1802 to 1945 and heavily shelled in the 1968 fighting — about a fifth of the original buildings stand, and the rebuilding continues. The afternoon is free; the riverside and the Dong Ba market are both close.

A boat up the Perfume River to Thien Mu, then the tombs of Tu Duc and Minh Mang, each built as a garden retreat the emperor used while alive. Back for the early-afternoon train to Da Nang: three hours, and the middle hour runs on a ledge above the sea around the Hai Van headlands. A half-hour transfer at the far end brings us into Hoi An for three nights.

A morning walk through the old town — the Japanese bridge, the Fujian assembly hall, and a shophouse still occupied by the family that built it. The port silted up in the nineteenth century and trade moved to Da Nang, which is why nothing here was ever demolished. Afternoon free: the tailors need a full day, and An Bang beach is fifteen minutes by bicycle. Dinner together.

Out early to My Son, the Cham sanctuary in use from roughly the fourth century to the thirteenth. American bombing in 1969 destroyed most of it; some twenty structures of the seventy-odd recorded remain, and the brickwork joints still puzzle conservators. We are back in Hoi An by early afternoon. The rest of the day is open — Tra Que’s herb beds, a cooking class, or the tailor for a second fitting.

A short flight down the coast to Cam Ranh, then forty minutes north into Nha Trang. In the late afternoon the Po Nagar towers on the hill above the river mouth, built by the Cham between the eighth and eleventh centuries and still an active place of worship — Vietnamese pilgrims come with incense, not cameras. Evening free along the seafront.

One free day, deliberately placed here after ten days of moving. Options we can arrange on the spot: a boat out to Hon Mun for snorkelling over what is left of the reef, the mud baths at Thap Ba, the Alexandre Yersin museum in town, or a bicycle up the coast road to Doc Let. Or you sit still, which is also a legitimate use of the day.

The late-morning flight from Cam Ranh to Tan Son Nhat takes an hour, and we are in District 1 by early afternoon. On foot from there: the Reunification Palace, whose gates a tank came through on 30 April 1975; the central post office, and the cathedral opposite, under restoration since 2017; and Ben Thanh market, which is now mostly for visitors and worth knowing that about.

An hour and a half north-west to Cu Chi, where 250 km of tunnels were dug between the 1940s and 1968. A short section has been widened for visitors; the original bore is shown alongside, and it is smaller than you expect. Back in the city for the War Remnants Museum, which is one-sided and says so, and holds photographs that are hard to walk past. Dinner together.

Ninety minutes south to Ben Tre, coconut country, which since July 2025 sits inside the enlarged Vinh Long province. A motorboat off the main river into the palm canals, a workshop where the husk, shell and flesh all go somewhere, and lunch with a family who farm here. Back in Saigon by late afternoon. Farewell dinner, and your leader will help with onward plans.

A transfer to Tan Son Nhat when your flight needs it; the airport is twenty minutes from District 1 outside the peak hours and closer to an hour inside them, so we build in the margin. If you have time before the flight, the Fine Arts Museum sits in an old merchant’s villa ten minutes from the hotel and is rarely busy.