Boutique Vietnam: 12 days, and where the money actually goes
The word boutique is used very loosely in Vietnam. A large number of hotels marketed that way are forty-room business hotels with a good lobby and a name in cursive. The genuinely distinctive places, the restored townhouses, the eight-room lodges built by architects who understood the landscape they
- Duration
- 12 days
- Pace
- Relaxed
- Hotel changes
- 4
- Best months
- Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Nov
- From
- $3,480 per person
This is a twelve-day route built around those, with four hotel changes and enough time in each to use the place rather than pass through it.
Who it suits: travellers who care where they sleep, who would rather have four properties than eight, and who want comfort without a resort corridor.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive in Hanoi. Private transfer to a restored 1930s townhouse in the French Quarter with fewer than twenty rooms, high ceilings and a courtyard. Dinner nearby, nothing scheduled.
Day 2: Hanoi. A private guided morning on foot through the trade streets of the Old Quarter and the colonial avenues, finishing with coffee somewhere on a first-floor balcony. Afternoon free. Evening in a villa restaurant our Hanoi office books.
Day 3: Hanoi to Ninh Binh. Two and a half hours south to a lodge set among the limestone towers, with a pool that looks straight into the karst. Afternoon on the water at Trang An after three, when the rowing boats thin out.
Day 4: Ninh Binh. Mua Cave at opening, then bicycles between the rice fields and the Bich Dong pagoda. Afternoon by the pool. This is the day that makes people extend the trip.
Day 5: Ninh Binh to Lan Ha Bay. Three hours east, then aboard a six-cabin wooden vessel: the size where the crew know your name by dinner and the boat can anchor where the large ones cannot. Kayaks before sunset.
Day 6: Lan Ha Bay. A full day on the water, with swimming, a cave at low tide and an empty beach on Cat Ba. We use Lan Ha rather than central Halong for one simple reason: several hundred boats run the main Halong route and about a tenth of that number come here.
Day 7: Lan Ha Bay to the central coast. Disembark mid-morning, drive to Hanoi and fly to Danang, then twenty minutes to a beach hotel between Danang and Hoi An. A pool villa or a sea-view room, depending on the property and your budget. The one long day.
Day 8: Hoi An. The Ancient Town at seven in the morning with a private guide, before the heat and the crowds. Back by ten. Afternoon on the beach or in the spa. Evening on the river.
Day 9: The central coast, free. A cooking session from the market, a bicycle through the paddies, the Cham ruins at My Son at opening, the Hai Van Pass by car with lunch at Lang Co, or a day that involves nothing but a lounger. All of it is set out in your document.
Day 10: The central coast, free. As above.
Day 11: The coast to Ho Chi Minh City. Late morning flight. A design hotel in District 1 or a quieter one across the river in Thao Dien, depending on whether you want to walk to dinner or to sleep. Evening on a rooftop, and dinner somewhere that treats Vietnamese food seriously.
Day 12: Departure. A late room release where the flight allows.
What is included
All accommodation with breakfast, chosen room category by room category rather than by star rating, two nights full board on a six-cabin Lan Ha Bay vessel, both domestic flights, private car and English-speaking driver on all transfer days, private guiding on three half-days, all entrance fees on guided days, restaurant bookings throughout, a day-by-day document, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant in Tel Aviv and our Hanoi office for the whole trip.
Where the money goes, honestly
At this level in Vietnam, roughly two thirds of the cost is the accommodation. The rest of the trip, food, drivers, guides, entries, is not much more expensive than it would be on a mid-range itinerary. That has a useful consequence: moving from a comfortable trip to this one changes your hotels dramatically and changes nothing else. If your budget is between the two tiers, we would put the money into Ninh Binh and the boat, and take a good ordinary hotel in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, where you will be out all day anyway.
The boat is where the range is widest. A cabin on a shared six-cabin vessel, a private charter of the same boat and a suite on a new build are three completely different prices for what looks on paper like the same two nights. We show you all three with photographs of the actual cabin.
Honest notes
Vietnam does not have many great city hotels. Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City both have several very good ones, but neither city has anything approaching the depth of Bangkok or Tokyo. The best properties in this country are outside the cities, which is why this route puts four of its eleven nights in Ninh Binh and on the water.
New is not always better. A great deal of hotel building is happening on the central coast and on Phu Quoc, and a hotel that opened last year may have beautiful rooms and no idea how to run a restaurant. We only use properties our Hanoi office has slept in.
The long day stays. Day 7 involves a boat, a drive and a flight. We can remove it by cutting the bay to one night, and we do not recommend that.
Built by Paz Prosianoy, our Southeast Asia specialist, with our Hanoi office.
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