Six week Vietnam itinerary

I’ve been meaning to post this one for a while now…

Six weeks sounded so long when we began planning, I thought we’d be able to do everything, and yes of course we might possibly have been able to, if we hadn’t stopped to breathe and moved from place to place every day and twice daily at weekends, which strangely enough we didn’t want to do. So we inevitably missed some places during our travels but that’s ok because now we have a really good reason to go back again and Vietnam is most definitely a place I will visit again…and again!

Our itinerary was built around the fabled reunification express train which travels along the long coast running the length of Vietnam, stopping at the main towns along the way. If we were going to plan the trip knowing what we do now, we would spend a few more days in Ho Chi Minh and Hoi An and a few less days in Hue and half the time in Nha Trang which, while it has beautiful beaches and ok diving, we found pretty soulless with the worst food we had anywhere on the trip. We stayed in Hanoi for two weeks but only because we had to get two visas, it’s a chaotic charming city and certainly worth at least a few days.

However if we were starting from scratch and really doing Vietnam all over I would still take 6 weeks but this time instead of taking the train (lovely as it was) I would love to pack a small backpack and hire a motorbike and get off the beaten track and for anyone who knows me and how much I loathe motorbikes that tells you how truly stunning the countryside in Vietnam is.

It was an incredibly crazy, fun and food filled trip that we lived, loved and laughed through, the links in the itinerary lead to the posts I wrote about those places.

Our 6 week Vietnam itinerary

• Day 1 Ho Chi Minh

• Day 2-4 Mekong Delta tour

• Day 5-7 Ho Chi Minh
  • 1 hour flight to Phu Quoc

• Day 8-11 Phu Quoc
  • 1 hour flight to HCM

• Day 12-14 Ho Chi Minh
  • Cu Chi Tunnels
  • HCM City Tour
  • Urban Adventures Food Tour
  • 9 hours by overnight train to Nha Trang

• Day 15-23 Nha Trang
  • Diving
  • 9 hours by train to Da Nang

• Day 24-26 Da Nang
  • Marble Mountains and Cham Musuem
  • 30 minutes by car to Hoi An

• Day 27-30 Hoi An
  • Urban Adventures Food Tour
  • 2 hours by train to Hue

• Day 31 -35 Hue
  • Citadel, Urban Adventures Food, Tu Duc, Khai Dinh, Minh Mang, Thien Mu Pagoda Tour
  • 15 hours by overnight train to Hanoi

• Day 36-40 Hanoi
  • Food on Foot tour
  • 4 hour drive to Ha Long Bay

• Day 41-42 Ha Long Bay
  • 4 hour drive to Hanoi

• Day 46 Hoa Lu to Tam Coc

We booked all of our accommodation with booking.com finding them to be well priced and responsive to any problems.  Urban Adventures provide excellent tours run by locals, although the Hue one was not their finest.  We found most of the hotels we stayed in offered the best value tours of the surrounding areas highlights and there was no need to book ahead. We used Vietnam Impressive for our trains and flights for ease more than anything else and they were excellent, they also arrange tours and our Mekong tour was organised by them and run by TNK travel.

Vietnam is a country rich with culture, history, a wonderfully welcoming people and some of the best food in Asia, I can’t wait until we head back to explore it some more Xx