What We Would Skip in Vietnam

This article costs us bookings and we publish it anyway. A day you resent is worse for us than a day we did not sell you.

Three categories. Things we will not book at any price. Things that are simply not worth your days, where reasonable people disagree and we will build them if you insist. And the things visitors expect us to dismiss that we would defend.

Things we refuse to book

Self-drive motorbike trips

Not in Ha Giang, not on the coast, not anywhere. Foreign licences are generally not valid in Vietnam without a local conversion, the accident rate is high, and rural medical provision is thin. We will put you on the back of a bike with an experienced local rider, or in a car with a driver, and we compare all three options honestly in motorbike or car in northern Vietnam.

We would rather lose the booking than take it, and we say the same sentence to everyone who asks.

Elephant riding

No riding, in Dak Lak or anywhere else, on any seat, under any description. Riding tourism still operates in the central highlands and it is in slow decline, which is a good thing.

What we book instead: the observation-led project in Yok Don, where animals are watched in forest rather than ridden and the mahouts are employed by the programme. It is a different and better morning.

Wildlife on a menu, and wildlife for photographs

Restaurants advertising wild meat, bear bile products, caged animals used as photograph props and civet coffee operations that keep animals in cages. We do not book any of it and we brief our guides accordingly.

Orphanage visits and short-term volunteering

Children are not an attraction, and a stranger passing through for an afternoon is not a benefit to them. We do not arrange it in any country we operate in.

The firing range at Cu Chi

The tunnels are a legitimate site. The commercial range on the same grounds, where visitors pay per round to fire military weapons a short distance from a war memorial, is not something we will book.

Things that are not worth your days

The main Ha Long cruising route

The bay is extraordinary. The central route through it carries several hundred vessels, and at the anchorage points you will be in a raft of boats looking at the same cave.

What we book instead: Lan Ha, reached via Haiphong and Cat Ba, or Bai Tu Long to the north east. The same karst, a fraction of the traffic, and two nights rather than one because the first day is mostly transfer. The full comparison is in Ha Long, Bai Tu Long or Lan Ha.

The Ha Long day trip from Hanoi

Four hours of driving for two hours on the water. Every part of this is a waste except the photograph.

Sapa town

Overbuilt into something close to a building site, with hotel blocks on the ridge and construction that has been continuous for years. We say so to everyone who asks for it by name.

What we book instead: the Muong Hoa valley below it with a guide from one of the village co-operatives, or Pu Luong, four hours from Hanoi, which has better lodges and just as good walking. If you want the northern mountains properly, Ha Giang is the answer, and it needs four days.

The Mekong day trip to My Tho

A conveyor belt: a boat, a coconut candy workshop, a honey tea stop, a bee farm, a horse cart, a commission at every one of them.

What we book instead: a night in Can Tho for the Cai Rang floating market at six in the morning from a small boat, or two nights on the small canals at Ben Tre. The delta is worth doing slowly or not at all.

Ba Na Hills and the golden bridge

A French-themed hilltop amusement complex above Danang, reached by a long cable car, with a bridge held up by two enormous stone hands. It photographs well. It is a theme park, and it is several hours of your central days.

Nha Trang

A high-rise beach city that has been developed hard and serves a particular market well. Most of our travellers are not that market.

What we book instead: Quy Nhon for a coast that has not been developed yet, Phu Quoc for resorts, Con Dao for quiet, or An Bang if you want a beach attached to a town.

The long stretches of the Reunification Express

Romantic in principle. Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City is 32 to 35 hours. Giving 16 hours of a two-week holiday to a night train is a decision to make deliberately rather than by default.

What we book instead: the Hue to Danang stretch, about two and a half hours along the coast and over the Hai Van Pass, which is one of the finest short rail journeys in Asia, and flights for the long legs.

Bai Dinh pagoda, Ninh Binh

An enormous modern temple complex, built from 2003 onwards, with electric buggies and corridors of identical statues. Next door, Trang An has flooded caves rowed by foot. Choose the caves.

The 24-hour suit in Hoi An

It will look like a 24-hour suit. Allow three days and two fittings, or leave it. We name the tailors we use and take no commission for it, which is not the norm in that town. More on using the town well in Hoi An and the centre.

A single night anywhere in the centre

Hue in one night is a stop rather than a place, and Hoi An in two is tight. If the schedule forces one-night stays, remove a region instead. Ten days in two regions beats ten days in three.

The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum queue, if your days are short

A long, tightly managed queue for a very brief filing past, with strict rules on dress, bags and photography, and closures for several weeks most years for maintenance.

What we book instead: the Museum of Ethnology in the suburbs, which explains the country’s 54 ethnic groups better than anything else in Vietnam and which almost nobody makes time for.

Things we would defend

The War Remnants Museum. One-sided by design and still essential. Graphic, so we handle its placement carefully and we do not build it with young children.

The Cu Chi tunnels, early and at the quieter Ben Duoc section rather than Ben Dinh.

Hue. The first thing cut from most draft itineraries and the thing people most often say they wish they had kept. Two nights.

Ninh Binh at seven in the morning. Busy by nine, beautiful before it.

Two nights on the water rather than one.

Bia hoi on a plastic stool, at under 50 cents a glass, which is not a tourist activity even though it appears in every guidebook.

Hanoi’s Old Quarter on foot at six in the morning, when the city is eating breakfast and the shops are still shuttered.

The rule underneath all of this

Vietnam is 1,025 miles (1,650 km) long and the constraint that matters is not how many days you have, it is how many times you change hotel. Above one move every two days the trip becomes transit. Every item on the skip list is really an argument about where a day belongs, and taking three of them out of a two-week route usually buys two unhurried days somewhere that deserves them.

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Send us the route you have drafted and we will tell you honestly what we would take out and what we would put in its place, then price the result. Free first outline, no obligation.

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Frequently asked questions

Will you build these things if we ask?

The second list, yes, with our reasoning written next to it. The first list, no.

Is Ha Long Bay worth going to at all?

Yes. The bay is worth it and the main cruising route usually is not. That is one decision, not two.

Is Sapa completely finished?

The town, largely. The valley below it, not at all. Book a village guide and stay out of the town centre, or go to Pu Luong.

What is the most common change you make to a draft itinerary?

Removing a region and adding nights to the two that remain. It happens in most files we are sent, and the cost of each shape is in our Vietnam cost article.

Do we really need two internal flights?

On a two-week route covering north, centre and south, yes. The alternative is spending three days of fourteen in transit. —

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What we would skip in Vietnam, and what we book instead