Best of Vietnam in 1 Week

You will find the driver standing outside of Hanoi’s airport, waiting to take you to your hotel in the Old Quarter and give you a smooth start to your 7-day tour of the highlights of Vietnam. After checking into the hotel, you have free time to relax or explore at your own leisure for the rest of the day.

Morning

Start with breakfast at your hotel before the guide picks you up in the lobby between 08:00 and 08:30. Following this, we take the drive to Ba Dinh District and the walk around the Ho Chi Minh Complex, dedicated to the country's great wartime leader. We head first to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, a site of great reverence for many millions of Vietnamese, followed by a look around the museum, the former leader's stilt house and the adjacent One Pillar Pagoda.

After this, we take a quick walk northwards to the beautiful Thanh Nien Street, bordered by lakes on both sides along with Quan Thanh Temple and Tran Quoc Pagoda. We take a look at both of these ancient feats of architecture, covering both Taoist and Buddhist principles respectively.

Afternoon

Lunch at a local restaurant will come before our tour of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, which displays the fascinating cultures of Vietnam’s 53 ethnic minority groups. This incorporates all of the distinguishing clothes, crafts and philosophies of these individual communities, along with full-scale replicas of their stilt houses at the back.

We follow this with a trip to the Temple of Literature, the first university in Vietnam, constructed under Confucian principles in 1070. Afterwards, we stroll around Hoan Kiem Lake and Ngoc Son Temple, situated in the south part of Hanoi Old Quarter, which we will explore on one final walk. 

Hanoi City Tour finishes at your hotel and you are free to spend the evening however you wish.

Notes: The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum is closed for maintenance between September and November. If your tour falls between these months, we will still be able to enjoy Ba Dinh Square outside of the mausoleum. Also, the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology is closed on Mondays, meaning we will head to the Vietnam Women’s Museum or Hoa Lo Prison Museum instead.

Note: Please be aware that this is merely a sample itinerary of an overnight cruise in Halong Bay. You are able to select your preferred cruise, the itineraries of which vary slightly, upon booking the Best of Vietnam in 1 Week with us.

Morning

The driver will arrive at your hotel lobby between 08:00 and 08:30 before starting the drive to Tuan Chau Harbour. This passes some incredible scenery of the Red River Delta on the way, leading us up to the spectacular scene of Halong Bay.

Afternoon

We kick off our cruising with a delectable seafood or vegetarian lunch, followed by a tranquil cruising, during which you can relax on the top deck or survey the beautiful scene from your cabin. We make our first stop in the mid-afternoon at the Surprising Cave, the biggest and most glamorous of Halong Bay’s cave offerings. We follow this with a visit to Tung Sau pearl farm, where we can observe the processes of pearl refinement in a humble building floating on the water. We can kayak around the pearl farm at this point and survey the vast beauty on offer.

Evening

We re-board the cruise and head to the overnight anchoring area. A beautiful sunset accompanies our last passage of the day, during which time there will be a cooking class and happy hour on the sundeck. After your delicious and fresh dinner, feel free to relax into the evening with squid fishing or simply lounging on the sundeck.

We start the day with a tai chi class held on the top deck, followed by breakfast in the dining room below. As our ship pulls up anchor, our destination is Luon Cave, one of the many glorious weather-eroded limestone systems in Halong Bay. We glide through here in kayaks or on a sampan rowboat, revealing the beauty of the stalactites and hidden lake found here.

After this, we head back to the cruise for the final time, taking a fabulous brunch on our return to the harbour. We disembark the cruise ending 2 day 1 night on Halong Bay cruise here and head to Hanoi’s airport for your flight to Ho Chi Minh City.

Catch the flight and arrive in Ho Chi Minh City, where a new driver will pick you up at the airport and transfer you to your central hotel.

Day 5 of Vietnam Itinerary 1 Week follows by the  breakfast at your hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, the driver will arrive at about 08:15 in your private vehicle. The almost 2-hour drive to the Cu Chi Tunnels follows this, and we will arrive to a video on the operation of the 250km network built by the Viet Cong. We climb into the tunnels after this and learn of how life operated in this cramped and dangerous environment, which has been made more comfortable for tourist visits.

Much of the intrigue of Cu Chi is in its trap doors and hidden entrances, many of which are examples of sublime camouflage. We will explore these and other war relics before heading back to Ho Chi Minh City. Enjoy the city in any way you see fit with free time, perhaps by getting a better understanding for the war at the Independence Palace and War Remnants Museum.

The final full day of your trip begins at your hotel at about 08:30 when the driver will arrive and start the smooth transfer southwards towards the ancient Mekong Delta.

We arrive at our destination of My Tho, one of the largest cities in the region. We will take a boat trip on the Bao Dinh canal after this, passing beautiful scenes and images of residents living in stilt houses beside the water. Pulling up to My Tho Market, we have a quick stop to purchase exotic fruits from the most abundant region anywhere in the country.

A quick stop at Tortoise Island and its fruit orchards will come before our cruising to Ben Tre, an incredibly luxuriant province capturing much of the magic for which the Mekong Delta is known. Our humble boat takes us through the Tan Thach Canal, an exquisite and lush waterway flanked by drooped nipa palm on both sides, creating a green tunnel through which we will drift.

We finish with our last activity, a visit to Thoi Son Island, where we can see traditional farming techniques still in operation today. We have a very peaceful lunch here, and this gives us a beautifully simple image of the Mekong Delta for us to take back to Ho Chi Minh City, where we will spend the final night of our tour. End of the day trip with Mekong Delta Boat One Day Tour.

Enjoy the final few hours of your tour before the driver collects you in good time for your flight. They will transfer you to Tan Son Nhat Airport, where your flight will signal the end of the best of Vietnam Itinerary 7 day tour.

We would like to thank you for your time on this tour. We hope that you enjoyed seeing the best of Vietnam with us!

Vietnam Escape Tours is happy to be the local operator for your trip in Vietnam for 1 week itinerary.