Vietnam

Hanoi is one of Asia's most atmospheric capitals — a thousand years of history layered into chaotic, charming streets. The Old Quarter buzzes with motorbikes and street food vendors, French colonial architecture stands alongside ancient temples, and Hoan Kiem Lake offers a tranquil escape. Pho for breakfast, egg coffee for lunch, bun cha for dinner.

Ho Chi Minh City (still called Saigon by locals) is Vietnam's energetic southern hub — a city of roaring motorbikes, French colonial landmarks, and some of the best street food on earth. The War Remnants Museum is sobering, the Ben Thanh Market is overwhelming, and the coffee culture is addictive. Always evolving, always buzzing.

Vietnam's most charming town — a UNESCO-listed ancient trading port where lantern-lit streets meet world-class tailoring, extraordinary cuisine, and bicycle-friendly riverside life.

Vietnam's Central Highlands hill station sits at 1,500m — cool and misty, French colonial villas, an Eiffel-designed railway station, the Crazy House, and the Valley of Love. Easy Rider motorbike tours of the Central Highlands start here. Coffee and flower capital, and the 3-hour spiral up from the coast is worth it for the climate shift.

Northern Vietnam mountain town at 1,500m near the Chinese border — iconic terraced rice paddies carved by Hmong and Dao ethnic minorities, Fansipan's 3,143m "Roof of Indochina" cable car, and multi-day homestay treks through Muong Hoa Valley. Cool year-round, foggy often, and best in golden September-October or green April-May.

Vietnam's premier beach resort stretches 6 km along the South China Sea — a crescent bay backed by mountains, the ancient Po Nagar Cham towers on a headland (2nd–17th century), and an island-hopping scene off Hon Mun Marine Protected Area with excellent snorkeling. The mud baths at Thap Ba and I-Resort are a Vietnamese spa tradition. Alexandre Yersin — the Swiss-French scientist who isolated the plague bacillus — lived and died in Nha Trang; his house and laboratory are now a museum.

The imperial capital of Vietnam under the Nguyen Dynasty from 1802 to 1945 — UNESCO-inscribed in 1993 as a complex of palaces, royal tombs, pagodas, and citadel walls along the Perfume River (Song Huong, named for the autumnal scent of fruit-tree blossoms drifting from the upstream orchards). The Imperial Citadel covers 520 hectares enclosed by 10-kilometre stone walls and a moat, modelled on Beijing's Forbidden City but smaller, with the Forbidden Purple City reserved exclusively for the emperor and his immediate family at its heart. The 1968 Tet Offensive's 26-day Battle of Hue was one of the bloodiest urban battles of the Vietnam War — much of the citadel was destroyed and restoration is still ongoing. Seven royal tombs scatter through the hills south of the city; Tu Duc, Khai Dinh, and Minh Mang are the most architecturally exceptional. Hue cuisine is its own school of Vietnamese cooking — the iconic everyday dish is bun bo Hue (spicy beef noodle soup with lemongrass and fermented shrimp paste). The Eiffel-firm-designed Truong Tien Bridge connects the imperial north bank with the modern south.

Vietnam's third-largest city sits on a 30-kilometre crescent of the South China Sea between the Hai Van Pass and the Marble Mountains — the country's fastest-growing urban centre, with the viral Golden Bridge held aloft by giant stone hands at Ba Na Hills, the 666-metre Dragon Bridge that breathes fire and water on weekend nights, and the My Khe (China Beach) resort strip. The five Marble Mountains south of the city hide Buddhist cave temples; the Son Tra peninsula north hosts the 67-metre Lady Buddha statue. Easy day trips to Hoi An (30 km south) and Hue (100 km north via the famous Hai Van Pass coastal route) make Da Nang the natural base for central Vietnam.

Hạ Long Bay is the postcard image of northern Vietnam — roughly 1,600 jungle-topped limestone karst islands rising sheer out of jade-green water across 1,553 km² of the Gulf of Tonkin. UNESCO listed it in 1994 (and again in 2000 for geology) and it became one of the New 7 Natural Wonders in 2012. Most visitors arrive on overnight junk-boat cruises out of Tuần Châu or Hạ Long City, threading between karsts to caves like Sửng Sốt and Thiên Cung, kayaking into hidden lagoons, and climbing the 427 steps up Ti Tốp Island for the iconic aerial view. The neighbouring Lan Hạ Bay (south of Cát Bà Island) has fewer boats and arguably better swimming.

Mui Ne is a dust-orange fishing village strung along a single coastal road four hours east of Ho Chi Minh City, where the South China Sea hits steady cross-shore wind almost every afternoon. That wind made it the kitesurfing capital of Southeast Asia, with November-to-April peak season packing the bay with kites and beach hostels charging by the lesson. Inland, the landscape goes surreal fast. Red sand dunes glow at sunrise, white sand dunes look like a slice of the Sahara dropped near the sea, and the Suoi Tien fairy stream cuts a shin-deep ribbon of warm water through orange canyon walls. Fish-sauce factories line the back lanes and explain the smell drifting through town at low tide.

Phu Quoc is Vietnam’s largest island, a pepper-and-fish-sauce outpost in the Gulf of Thailand that sits closer to Cambodia than to the Vietnamese mainland. The south end has the postcard beaches — Sao Beach’s soft white crescent and Long Beach’s 20-kilometre sweep of resort and hostel — plus the world’s longest sea-crossing cable car at 7.9 kilometres, which links the mainland to little Hon Thom island and was opened in 2018. Vietnam grants 30-day visa-free entry to every nationality on arrival here, which makes it one of the easiest tropical entries on the planet. The fish-sauce factories of Duong Dong town smell like the Atlantic at low tide.