PLAN YOUR PERFECT VIETNAM ITINERARY

There are so many incredible bucket list worthy destinations in Vietnam but the country is over a thousand miles long which is like the distance from Florida to New York so there needs to be a lot of thought and planning that goes into your Vietnamese itinerary to maximize your time in Vietnam. I'm Finn. My husband Tim and I have traveled all over Vietnam like for the span of maybe four months or so in and out for the past five years. We did the full Saigon to Hanoi motorbike trip, Ha Long Bay, Sapa, up and around the Ha Giang loop, all the way down on the island of Phu Quoc and everything in the middle of the country too. So I'm not necessarily like saying this to you like but what bothers me about some people's travel videos is some people say these are the top three places to go in Thailand and it's probably the only three places that that person went in Thailand. So I just want to let you know that this video is coming from a place of we've done multiple Vietnamese trips and thus we are able to look at Vietnam at a whole and say like this is really great, this probably doesn't need to be included in your quick one week trip, maybe you only go there if you have more time, it's just it's coming from a place of love. So there's a lot of information in this video but if you're having fun already give it a like and stick around for all the information. I love maps. Let's look at a map. Okay Vietnam is long and skinny so then we've the north Vietnam. Look at all these things up in the north. Let's focus on the north right now. If you are short on time coming into Vietnam like under a 10 day trip, Hanoi is a great airport to fly into because there is just a lot going on up here in northern Vietnam. You're probably wanting to see some of those iconic places like Ha Long Bay, rice terraces up in the north of Sa Pa and are up here and then down south of Hanoi in Tam Coc is kind of like a Ha Long Bay on land where you've got those tall limestone cliffs and it's very very scenic. The other great part about that is all those destinations that I just mentioned are within about a half day's travel from Hanoi. Okay the Ha Long Bay cruise scene. I know that you've seen a picture of Ha Long Bay. The length of the cruise is up to you based on what type of trip you want to have. Like if you just are saying that you want to take your picture of Ha Long Bay and see it, you can do a really short one night trip. You can check out our video where we did a budget Ha Long Bay trip on our first trip where we had like no money. We couldn't afford a Ha Long Bay cruise so what we did is we took the ferry on our motorbikes out to Cat Ba Island. So if that sounds interesting you can check out that video to see how that all works but I'll just say you know once you're there you're there you can see it. So if you want four days of relaxing on a cruise great awesome. If you just want to make sure you see it you're likely taking transportation from Hanoi that's included in your Ha Long Bay cruise out over there and then you can get out. So it'll take you about half the day between you know checking out of your hotel, getting on the bus, getting out there. So as you're planning your Ha Long Bay trip even if it's just one night remember it's two days because you're going to get out there then you're going to be out there you're going to sleep you're going to wake up and then you got to get all the way back. If the Ha Long Bay cruise thing is not on your list a good alternative is to go down to Tam Coc. Some people do this as a day trip but that is really far from Hanoi to just do a day trip plus all the accommodation there is really charming. I see here you can go on a river cruise through caves. Now everyone's time is valuable everyone is trying to maximize the most that they can do on vacation but as a rule of thumb I'm always recommending to try to not book less than two nights in any destination because if you think about what you do during the day to get there you have a travel day if you want to do anything at the place you need a day off right and then you go to bed again and then you can wake up and then you can travel the next day. So example here in Tam Coc if you wanted to do this cool river cruise on this boat or this hike unless you want to do those kind of tour intensive things on the same day as traveling you're going to want a separate day to do that. So for the absolute shortest time in Vietnam I would recommend flying into Hanoi you can maybe head out to Ha Long Bay and or down to Tam Coc maybe a four or five night minimum but get you some beautiful iconic sights. Expanding on that still in northern Vietnam the beautiful mountainous rice terraces that you've seen in photos of Vietnam is all the way up here and the town of Lao Cai this is where you travel to to get to Sapa. The quickest way to get here is on an overnight train so it is not close to Hanoi. What's popular here in Sapa is trekking or hiking unfortunately right now my recommendation is is Sapa is a region that has that has definitely been changed by tourism. Vietnam is not typically a place where you're getting all the kind of street hawkers trying to sell you things. Sapa was out of this world and some of the worst that we've seen in any country that we've ever traveled to. No thank you. So while this area is beautiful I would recommend visiting this area maybe to go to a specific hotel like this incredible one to be there for the views or to use the facilities there instead of saying oh I'm just gonna camp out in town and kind of walk around and figure it out as I go only because you're gonna get bombarded every day with people trying to take you out on on treks or take you out to their village. Again this is not common in Vietnam but it is common in Sapa. If you're more of a get off the beaten path type person more adventurous but you still want to see those beautiful mountainous rice paddies that is what the Ha Giang region is for. There is a popular motorbike loop that's a several day loop in this Ha Giang region this has some of the most incredible views in the country but it is for more of the adventurous traveler. Unless you're renting a motorbike or purchasing a motorbike in Hanoi and doing this big Vietnamese motorbike trip which you can see more of that in vlog form on our channels then you can also take an overnight bus. Ugh the overnight buses. I talk about that more in the travel tip video if you want to hear more about transportation options but to get up to Ha Giang you're going to take an overnight bus and then you can also rent a bike there in Ha Giang and do the loop but you need minimum three days to do that area. Okay so that's northern Vietnam we've got our short version of that trip you can easily spend seven to ten days there just in the north. If you're talking about exploring any other region than northern Vietnam I would recommend flying even if you're already south of Hanoi in Tam Coc the flights are just so cheap to head all the way down into center Vietnam or south Vietnam versus what would look maybe more like a 14 hour overnight train ride. If you can always choose the train over the bus. I'll say it one more time always choose the train over the bus. I'll just keep geographically working my way south. The first area that you'll see is Phong Nha. Phong Nha is remote and by itself versus some other locations here in central Vietnam that are closer to each other. Phong Nha because of that region is more maybe like new up and coming. What you're doing here is you are caving. This is the world's largest cave but unless you have three thousand dollars a person you're probably not going on the Son Dune cave expedition but there are loads of other options including overnight treks. You can check out our four night Phong Nha cave expedition on our channel. It's like a two hour more like documentary style video if you want to see that. It's intense. It's a lot of hiking. Again for my adventure travelers. So you're looking for adventure head to Phong Nha. Other good options in the center of Vietnam you of course have the big airport there of Da Nang but Da Nang as a city is kind of like a big local city. There's a little bit of a digital nomad expat scene there but as far as like the sights to see that's not the most charming of the Vietnamese cities. There is the new hand there. We weren't there when they built the hand so if you need to see the hand and walk along that then you can go check that out. If you're an instagrammer and you take a picture with the hand you can go see that there. But just south of there 45 minutes south of there is the most adorable town of Hoi An. This is by far up there on the must do's of Vietnam. On the 24th of every month there is the lantern festival here. Don't get confused with the Chiang Mai Thailand one you know where they go up in the sky. This lantern festival goes down onto the river and it's beautiful candlelit all over and there's a bunch of vendors selling lit for those like the paper lanterns everywhere brightly colored. It is just the most beautiful town to be in at night. What is also popular in Hoi An is to get clothes tailored there so you can pop into so many different shops there get custom dresses made all the way up to Tim even got a custom leather motorcycle motorcycle jacket made there which is super premium and then we got to carry that all around Southeast Asia with us for several months. Okay now on my central Vietnam like maybe don't need to visit locations are Hue the ancient city of Hue. I was I don't know if I just had super high expectations I was so stoked to go here I mean we did really have bad weather so I don't want that to skew my opinion but what you do here is you go to that large temple and there's just so many temples and pagodas in Vietnam that this one didn't necessarily stand out to me and so I didn't really feel like it was worth our time to well we were on motorbikes we were driving through there anyways. How excited are you to be here? Don't put it on me he just said he should have seen Star Wars again. We didn't have to stay. We've seen a lot of old temples. So for central Vietnam I would recommend Phong Nha and or Hoi An and that could take you anywhere between three to five days on those trips. Okay now we're still kind of like slithering south into Vietnam and let's talk about here the south and then also um okay Nha Trang is a beach town so if you're like me and you're like I must be at the beach like where are all the best beach this is a beach town but this is like Russian Cancun okay this is like because you're not Vietnamese when you're walking through Nha Trang the Vietnamese people assume you're Russian and will be speaking Russian to you there's Russian on the restaurant menu I know it's crazy but that's kind of what it is there so um culturally that's super interesting so if that interests you I mean maybe go check out Nha Trang but just know that that's what the scene is there it's kind of like eastern Russians heading down to warmer weather for a budget trip so there's like a lot of drinking and Russian partying and hanging out on the beach which might be super fun so check that out. Okay if we're winding inland from the Russian tourist town of Nha Trang then we visit the mountainous town of Da Lat. Da Lat is so cute it's the Vietnamese wine region which no Vietnam is not known for their wine and no I wouldn't say it's the best wine I've ever had in my life but it's just really cute here this is a Vietnamese honeymoon destination so you will see Vietnamese honeymooners here which is so cute there's you know cute Airbnb's around and this is a pretty good mix of off the beaten path but also still friendly like you can get around with English. If you are motorbiking the drive in between Nha Trang and Da Lat is one of the best in the country you know it's something to see even if you just did one night there it's cute. Curving down from Da Lat back to the coast is the town of Mui Ne more Russians here but Mui Ne is really cool because this is where the red sand dunes are yes I know look at how beautiful these are there's a little bit of camera play here these aren't incredibly vast like the Sahara desert or something there's just some little red sand dunes so if the red sand dunes are high on your bucket list maybe one night here but other than that Mui Ne in my opinion does not have that much charm beyond that. Okay all the way down south back to Saigon in the south just so you know that even though on the maps and on your airline ticket it's going to say Ho Chi Minh refer to the city name as Saigon. Saigon is such a fun city oh my gosh there's so much going on here there's an awesome backpackers scene and a whole backpacker street so if you are either solo traveling or wanting to meet up with other people this has got a great fun nightlife here. I prefer the food in the south because it's just a little bit more spicy and flavorful and there's there's just a lot to do between markets and the American or Vietnamese war museum is also there so there's so much going on in the south. Two great day trips from Saigon one is the Cu Chi tunnels you're able to actually crawl through the Viet Cong tunnel system this takes oh I forget maybe about 45 minutes maybe over an hour to get all the way out to Cu Chi. This is a guided tour just about any hotel even if you're staying at a super budget place in Saigon will help you get coordinated with an actual tour to go out there and tour guides take everybody on that trip. I don't really think you just show up and go through that so you go on a guided tour through that place and then really the only thing I can think of that we haven't done in Vietnam apart from the Ha Long Bay full-on cruise is the Mekong Delta trip. The Mekong Delta is pretty far south of Saigon and usually by the time it comes around to it anytime that we've been in Saigon we're just kind of like ah I don't want to go drive I don't know maybe it's over two hours to get down there. Looks great the photo's super cute it's obviously a very super touristy thing to do but uh throw on your Vietnamese hat and go hang out on the Mekong River. Now if you are looking for that beach time in Vietnam and I didn't really sell you on the Russian town of Nha Trang or Mui Ne there is always the option to head all the way down to Phu Quoc. Phu Quoc is almost more off the coast of Cambodia than it is of Vietnam but it is a gorgeous tropical paradise. Unfortunately I mean truly unfortunately when we were there in 2016 Phu Quoc was very polluted. There was litter scattering all of the beaches and even though we were staying at a resort that cleans the beach the pollution in the water attracts all the really tiny minuscule jellyfish and I mean there's jellyfish you can't even see the water it just looks like gel but the good news is that I have been hearing a lot of good things about Phu Quoc now. If you have been to Phu Quoc more recently than 2016 please let us all know in the comments is that area getting a little bit more cleaned up. If you want to hear more information about traveling to Vietnam like navigating Vietnamese food menus and visa requirements and other fun things like the weather when to go I cover all of that in kind of a Vietnam travel tip video you can see here and if you are motorbiking we have so much information about motorbiking including tons of vlogs motorbiking around Vietnam so go check out another video for that.