From October 31 to December 7, 2025, we were backpacking in Vietnam as a family. If you’re considering backpacking Vietnam, then we’d love to share our schedule, what we learned along the way, what we would suggest are must-do activities (with input from our boys – 16, 14, and 11), and a few things we’d skip.
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To frame this information, we’re a Canadian family of five, housesitting in Australia both before and after our visit to Vietnam. This gave us a clear window of dates for flying in and flying back out. Since we were traveling to and from Australia, Ho Chi Minh City was the best place for flights on both legs, since it’s the biggest city in Southern Vietnam.
A quick overview of our initial plan for backpacking Vietnam as a family:
Originally, we had considered spending 2 weeks moving from Ho Chi Minh City (the biggest hub in the south) to Hanoi (the capital in the North), then spending 2 weeks making our way back down to revisit some of the places we enjoyed most.
Once we started actually planning our trip, we realized it would be too rushed to spend time stopping by everything and then backtracking. Instead, we decided to spend 3 weeks traveling up, spend 2 weeks in the north, then fly from Hai Phong (in the North instead of Hanoi) to Ho Chi Minh in the south for 1 night to catch our flight back to Australia.
Our route (roughly) for spending a month backpacking Vietnam as a family
Why fly to Ho Chi Minh from Haiphong instead of Hanoi?
We use Skyscanner to book our flights. It allows us to compare multiple airlines and find nearby flights. We ended up saving $30 per person ($150 for our family of 5) using Skyscanner’s tool to search “Nearby Airports,” and while $150 doesn’t seem like much in the grand scheme of things, with hotels at $11/night and enjoying amazing street food for $2/meal, it puts that $150 in perspective.
Instead of being a booking platform, Skyscanner just checks the booking platforms and airlines directly to find the best flight options for your dates. Once you choose a flight, it will take you to the airline directly or booking.com or whatever site has the best price for the flight you’re looking for.
Haiphong was on our to-do list anyway, so instead of ending in Hanoi to fly south, we went to Hanoi first and then flew south from Haiphong.
What we didn’t anticipate about spending a month in Vietnam:
When we started planning our trip to Vietnam, we intially just looked on skyscanner for the cheapest place to fly to Asia from Sydney on our flight dates. (you can search “Explore Everywhere” as a destination to find out where you might want to fly from a specific starting point. November: Sydney to Vietnam. Sure!
Initially, I (Adam) was imagining bustling cities juxtaposed with rice fields. We had heard a lot about street food in Vietnam, beaches along the coastline, and hiking in the mountains. Great. We can make a month of exploring that. We didn’t anticipate how concentrated the population centers were or how far apart they would be. I thought we’d rent an Airbnb for a month and take a couple of weekend trips.
We asked our oldest to research to see if there was a theme park in Vietnam – it turns out that theme parks are quite the attraction in nearly every major city, so he started making a wishlist that had us stretching our visit all the way from north to south.
Deciding where to visit in Vietnam:
All of that to say, if you’re considering a trip to Vietnam, start by figuring out your goal and plan your trip around it. Here are some ideas to narrow down your goals:
- Adrenaline at tourist theme parks
- Hiking through rice fields in the mountains
- A local experience in a small village
- A resort beach vacation
- Shopping to stuff your luggage with a new wardrobe
- Give me heat (or inversely, keep me out of the heat)
- Tasting the local specialty in as many areas as possible
In Vietnam, it could easily be 1000 miles from that video you saw of the floating market on Instagram to that picture-perfect hike through the rice fields in the mountains, or from that rainbow slide video to that day cruise in Halong Bay. Having a goal in mind will help determine where you want to spend your time here.
As a side note, “Rainbow Slides” have become a bit part of tourist attractions in Vietnam, so we made a master list of where to find rainbow slides in vietnam
For our family backpacking itinerary in Vietnam, we wanted to see a little bit of everything (but especially theme parks and coffee), so we spent as little as one night in some locations and as much as 4 or 5 nights in others, which made for a month that felt like we were constantly moving. It’s ok if that’s not your speed. Below is our itinerary, broken down into what we did and our general observations for each place we visited. Hopefully, this helps you determine where you might like to visit in Vietnam.
Below our itinerary, we’ll outline some must-have apps, eSIM recommendations for your phone, how to prep ahead of your trip with immigration and visas, and what to expect from the culture, which may be different from what you’re used to.
Backpacking in Vietnam: Our Itinerary
October 31-November 4: Ho Chi Minh City (The biggest city in the south)
We eventually found some delicious street food at the Ben Thanh Market
What we enjoyed:
- Lots of activity and plenty of things to do with kids in Ho Chi Minh
- Plenty of tourism, so they were accustomed to helping us out if we looked lost
- Getting accustomed to finding street food, paying and making change, and getting a general baseline for what to expect in other areas.
- A decent number of people spoke some English
- It was a good starting point for us to get our feet wet and adjust to some of the “culture shock” like currency conversion and what to expect from prices
- There are plenty of cafes and restaurants, so we could find a wide variety of whatever we wanted to try (or some more recognizable foods when requested by our boys)
Things to consider:
- It’s always busy and noisy (we’re sure some areas are quieter than others)
- Traffic is constantly honking, revving, and swerving
- Crossing the street is an event in itself
- Prices are a bit higher because of the size of the city
Highlights of what we did in Ho Chi Minh
- Soui Tien Cultural Park (Amusement Park)
- Dam Sen Cultural Park (You guessed it. Another theme park)
- Visit the Apartment Cafes (we just looked at it from the street)
- Here’s our list of things to do with kids in Ho Chi Minh (some we made it to and some that will have to be for our next visit)
Our Hotel Costs: We found a hotel near Bui Vien Walking Street for around $20/night. (Note: The Bui Vien Walking Street is not good for kids after dark). We wouldn’t recommend our hotel specifically (nothing wrong with it, but nothing fancy), but this was a good area for being centrally located and getting around with plenty of street food, a few minutes from our hotel.
Our room had three queen beds in a single room with a bathroom, A/C, and a fridge for around $20 USD/night – enough space for our family of 5.
Transportation: Ho Chi Minh > Can Tho via Bus booked with 12go
Ho Chi Minh City to Can Tho on the sleeper bus (during the day)
November 4-5: Can Tho (To visit the Cai Rang floating market)
For breakfast, fresh noodles in broth (pho), fruit, and coffee!
A lot of tours offer a day trip from Ho Chi Minh to the floating market in Cai Rang (just down the river from the main hub city, Can Tho). The day trip starts at 3 am with a 3-hour bus ride to get on a boat at 6 am. We decided instead to take a bus to Can Tho the night before and get up for the morning market at 6 am.
If you take a day trip from Ho Chi Minh, you then ride the 3-hour bus back after lunch, making for a long day. For some people, this is a great option. For our family, it was going to be much more realistic to take the bus down the day before, stay the night in Can Tho and not have to leave the city right away after getting up early for the market.
What we enjoyed:
- The night market in Can Tho offered a wide variety of street food from fried options, salads, spring rolls, smoothies, and (quite standard) meat on a stick.
- Pricing was a little less than Ho Chi Minh (night market food was about half the price, and the hotel was about 30% less)
- A good night’s sleep allowed us to really enjoy our time at the market (we took a private boat and tour guide) so we could move at our own pace and not have to rush to a schedule to get back to a bus headed for Ho Chi Minh.
- The floating market is a completely unique experience and worth considering.
Things to consider:
- Can Tho’s appeal is tourism to the floating market, fishing, and agriculture. There’s not much else to do in the area other than the floating market and the night market. There are some interesting cafes and shopping malls. If you need to fill time, there are interesting ways to do that, but it’s more of an industrial town that tourist destination.
- Unless you have a reason for an extended stay, we wouldn’t recommend booking nights there with the intention of “wandering and getting to know the area”
What we did in Can Tho:
- Cai Rang Floating Market
- Can Tho Night Market
- Visit the King Koi Cafe (there’s also one in Ho Chi Minh)
- Shopping and cafes
Our Hotel Costs: We found a hotel near the Can Tho night market for around $17/night. You can get a nicer hotel with a pool and breakfast for a bit more, but you may not be within walking distance of evening street food. We wouldn’t recommend our hotel specifically (nothing wrong with it, but nothing fancy), but this was a good area for being centrally located and getting around with plenty of street food, a few minutes from our hotel.
Like Ho Chi Minh, our room had three queen beds in a single room with a bathroom, A/C, and a fridge for around $17 USD/night.
We booked our room for 2 nights, but we had to get on an overnight sleeper bus at 8pm the second night BUT this was a better option for us than packing our luggage before we left the hotel at 5:30am for the market, and gave us somewhere to shower and relax for the evening until it was time to get on our sleeper bus – this was an extra $17 well spent…
Like we said, nothing fancy:
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Cao Tho > Dalat (Overnight Sleeper Bus booked with 12go)
Overnight sleeper bus from Can Tho to Dalat
November 6-10: Dalat (Mountain Town)
Dalat was originally founded in the late 1800s as a mountain resort for French colonizers to escape the heat of Ho Chi Minh City. It’s now a shipping hub for agriculture in the area, giving farmers a centralized place to ship their crops to other areas of Vietnam and abroad.
We quickly noticed the difference in temperature and humidity, going from constant warmth and constantly on the lookout for shade in Ho Chi Minh to being comfortable during the day and needing a hoodie after sunset in Dalat.
As a resort town (plenty of tourists, but a regular getaway for locals), Dalat still maintains a strong emphasis on tourism. While there, we rode an alpine coaster through the mountains at Datanla Waterfalls Park, rode the largest rainbow slide in Vietnam at MongoLand Dalat (see our video below), and spent an afternoon exploring the Dalat Crazy House – a real hotel you can stay at, but with architecture as you’ve never seen before.
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What we enjoyed about Dalat
- Cooler temperatures and less humidity than Ho Chi Minh
- Small town feel – less traffic, noise, and the smell of exhaust
- Plenty of “touristy” things to keep us busy
- Walking the town at night – Dalat lights up at night! Look for the eiffel tower, walk to the night market, and see the lights around the lake.
Don’t get your hopes up about the Dalat night market
The night market building in Dalat has dozens of stalls of the same dried fruit with the same variety and the same prices. We enjoyed walking around the stalls and food carts around the night market, but don’t plan to make an evening inside the night market builidng. Once you’ve seen one stall of dried mango and strawberries, you’ve seen them all.
Plan to go on a good-weather evening so you can walk around outside the night market building where there’s plenty to see, then walk down to the lake and check out the lights there.
Also, ask about pricing before you order food (common sense, yes, but those spring rolls were calling to me (Adam, of course.)
What we did in Dalat:
- “Mario Kart” Cao Nguyen Hoa Track
- Mongoland to ride the largest rainbow slide in Vietnam
- Datanla Waterfall and Alpine Coaster
- Crazy House
- Wandered the town to see it lit up after dark
See our full list of family-friendly activities in Dalat (some we visited and some we ran out of time to visit). Our favorite was the Crazy house.
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Hotel Costs: Our Dalat hotel rooms were $11 each, but we couldn’t find a room for five people in Dalat, so we booked two rooms ($22/night) – one for the boys and one for us. We had to book the rooms as 1 adult per room, but when we got to the front desk, the manager handed us two keys and said, “One for the kids and one for the adults.”
We were at a hostel, but our room had a private bathroom. The boys had two doubles in their room, and we had a queen. There were dorm rooms at that hostel, but we booked private rooms. There was a desk area and a closet, but no fridge, which was fine because we were enjoying a lot of street food and weren’t bringing home leftovers (we have a 16-year-old, so we’ve mostly forgotten what leftovers are anyway)
Being a tourism town means there are plenty of hotels in Dalat. We like to choose something comfortable for our family of five near downtown so we can walk to night markets or local restaurants. We only spent $22/night, and our hotel was safe and clean, but if you want to make your hotel a destination, you can get a really nice room for $50-$80/night or live like royalty at $100/night at a resort out of town.
We liked that our hotel offered on-site breakfast for just a couple of dollars each (fried eggs, bread, coffee, and rice). If we were planning to go out for the day, this saved us a step of walking to a cafe before going out.
Dalat > Nha Trang Sleeper bus booked with 12go (during the day)
Bus from Dalat to Nha Trang
Nha Trang November 10-13
Nha Trang is a resort city on the coast with plenty of beautiful beachfront. While most of the Vietnamese signage has English as a second language (if it includes a second language), Nha Trang’s signage often includes Vietnamese, English, and Russian.
Through a little digging, we found out that Nha Trang has been a destination for Russian tourists since Russia previously had a naval base in the area. We didn’t stay on the beach, but a few blocks away. We found that pricing here was high (on par with Ho Chi Minh). Street food was almost twice the price from Dalat.
The Nha Trang night market at the beach was mostly souvenirs. I’m sure there are local markets if you’re looking for them, but we wanted to be near the beach (not on the beach) as a change from Ho Chi Minh or Dalat.
In exchange for the higher prices, you’re going to get amazing walks on the beach (facing east, so don’t get too excited if you’re into sunsets.) We liked how clean the area was, and there are plenty of options for coffee, food, ice cream, and coffee (yes, we had coffee at least twice each day). There’s a diverse range of restaurants. We had sushi one night, Vietnamese lunch, and if you’re nearby, we would recommend Leo Tea for coffee, tea, or fruit drinks.
We also found a dentist here for some cleanings and fillings – they’re used to serving tourists, so cleanliness and standards are very high.
What we liked about Nha Trang:
- Beach town for walks in the sand
- Plenty to see and do for tourists (mostly foreign tourists. Locals are more likely to go to Dalat)
- Lots of options for cafes, street food, and night life
Things to consider:
- Nha Trang is a resort town. Consider most of the beach area a foreign tourist destination, not an authentic local experience
- Prices are higher than in other areas
- Very busy and not an experience of local life in Vietnam
What we did in Nha Trang
- Visited Monkey Island
- Walked on the beach
- Dental Cleaning (yeah, real exciting)
- Enjoyed the pool at our hotel (first pool in Vietnam, and it overlooked the city on the 10th floor)
- Visited the night market at the beach (mostly souvenirs and clothing)
What we missed:
- Vinwonders Nha Trang – we had visited theme parks just before this and were planning a few more in the near future. With the price of this park and the activities they offered, we decided to skip, BUT we’re sure it would be a great day. We found that other parks in Vietnam offered more for less, but if Nha Trang is your destination, take a day to experience VinWonders.
Hotel cost in Nha Trang: $30/night, a few blocks from the beach. There are plenty of hotel options in Nha Trang, depending on how you’d like to spend your visit. Make sure you check the address of the hotel and the map before booking. Just because a hotel says it’s “Happy Beach Hotel” or “Sunny Mountain Hotel” doesn’t mean it has anything to do with being on the beach or mountain.
This hotel was interesting. We booked a hotel room for five people with two queen beds. We assumed that the hotel would have a cot or sofa bed for the fifth person. Nope. Just two queens. When we asked at the front desk, they said we’re welcome to have five people sleep here, but the room is just two queens.
The manager said the Expedia listing was wrong, so they got a cushion from the pool deck and an extra set of bedding, and thankfully, there was room on the floor. Moral of the story: If you have more than four people, don’t trust a booking that allows for five people unless you see a picture of enough beds in the listing.
Nha Trang > Da Nang (We looked for things to do between Nha Trang and Da Nang and decided we wanted to fast track. Because of the distance, we could have taken an all-day bus or all-day train, but for the same price as the bus, Skyscanner flight options saved us nearly an entire day of travel.
Flying Nha Trang to Da Nang
Da Nang, November 13-16
My Khe Beach, Da Nang
Da Nang is another coastal town, and while it does have resorts and fancy hotels near the beach, it seems like local tourism is more important than international tourism, so many restaurants and street vendors sell Vietnamese food. Da Nang’s biggest claim to fame is Sunworld Ba Na Hills – a theme park with a famous “Golden Hand” bridge.
Even the coffee shop down the road from us had the golden bridge hands on its takeaway cups. The park is almost an hour drive out of town (we took Grab each way- like Uber).
Da Nang had plenty of unique coffee shops (try the egg coffee), street vendors, and beach front to walk down. With a river running through the city, there are plenty of bridges to cross, and one notable bridge is the Dragon Bridge which is near the night market. It lights up at night, and on weekends, there’s a dragon bridge show where the head of the dragon shoots fire and water. Unfortunately, in Mid-November we had rain, so there wasn’t a show while we were there.
Da Nang > Hoi An (Just under an hour, and the Grab taxi price was around $25 for our family and luggage) – Da Nang and Hoi An are right next to each other down the coast. Many people talk about them as one area on the central coast, and will stay in one and take a day trip to the other.
Things we liked about Da Nang
- A great combination of coastal town, tourist things to do, and local life
- Pricing was less than Nha Trang and less foreign touristy
- Ba Na Hills Theme Park is up in the mountains, and an experience we haven’t had anywhere else
Things to consider:
- Da Nang is not the cheapest place in Vietnam (if that’s your goal), but it’s not as expensive as Nha Trang.
- Most of what to do in Da Nang is to explore the city and go to Ba Na Hills
- It can be rainy September – December, and busy outside of the rainy season
Hotel costs in Da Nang: We had a single room with 3 double beds for $38/night at our hotel in Da Nang near My Khe Beach. The hotel had an indoor pool and was a couple of blocks from My Khe Beach with plenty of cafes, coffee shops, and food carts within a few minutes’ walk (which was great because we had to time going out around the rain).
Da Nang > Hoi An – less than an hour drive, so we used Grab (their version of Uber)
Hoi An, November 16-19
The colorful shops in Hoi An Ancient City are amazing to see
Hoi An has an amazing history, but despite the historical significance and being named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, there can be significant flooding in the area from the river. The ancient town is built in two sections: One along the river and the other over the bridge on an island in the river.
Our Grab driver told us there are multiple dams upstream from the city, and when they get too full in the rainy season, they open the dams and flood Hoi An, next to the ocean. He said he wished they would figure out a way to protect the heritage of the old town, but the dams also protect the agriculture that supports much of Vietnam.
While we were staying outside the Ancient Town, there was so much flooding that entire streets near the river and on the ancient town island were 3 or 4 feet under water. That flooding, along with rain, meant we decided to cut our visit short, but thankfully, we were able to walk through the old town the evening we arrived before the rain started, and visit VinWonders Nam Hoi An on an overcast day while the rain (mostly) held out.
Visit the old town during the day to get a feel for the area, but it really comes alive after dark.
It was sad to see the flooding in November, but the people are resilient and still offer boat tours to see the city
Things we liked about Hoi An Ancient Town
- The ancient town was an interesting experience. You have centuries-old restaurants and silk tailors next to buildings that are now leased as Irish Pubs and Mr. Bean coffee shops.
- Food was really reasonable considering it’s a tourist area. Competition is high, so prices are low.
- Many people at the shops speak English, and with the flooding, they were very happy to have guests.
- The flooding doesn’t grind everything to a halt. The people are somewhat used to adapting. Riverboat cruises now offer cruises through the flooded old town. People selling food relocate their stalls to dry areas.
- Our boys loved VinWonders Nam Hoi An (Nam means south, so the name is VinWonders South of Hoi An)
Things to consider
- Stay at a hotel in Hoi An near the ancient town. It’s the real draw of the city, but avoid staying IN the old town from September to December since there’s a chance of flooding.
- You may consider staying in Da Nang and waiting for a day with good weather to make a day trip to Hoi An Ancient Town (Grab both ways is really reasonable)
Hotel Costs in Hoi An: $39/night. We had two queen beds and a cot with a private bathroom. There weren’t any amenities at this hotel (called a homestay – usually some hotel rooms above where the owners live). We were a 5-minute walk from the old town, but far enough away that we didn’t get any flooding.
After Hoi An, we flew from Da Nang > Hanoi thanks to finding flight deals on Skyscanner.
Flying from Da Nang to Hanoi – you can take a train, but we found a good deal on flights
A quick note here, just north of Da Nang is Hue, the original capital of Vietnam before it got relocated to Hanoi in the 1700s. Hue is home to the imperial city (the capital buildings that have been historically preserved). If you love history and architecture, this might be worth visiting, but we don’t have any other recommendations beyond these Hue Imperial City tours on Klook. We skipped it since I (Adam) got outvoted on history to opt for visiting rice fields in the hills of Sapa in Northern Vietnam.
Since Hue is just a couple of hours north of Da Nang, there are plenty of day trips to visit if you decide not to relocate.
There’s so much to see and do in Vietnam that we had to come to terms with the reality that we couldn’t do it all, and now Hue can be on our to-do list for a future visit.
Hanoi: Vietnam’s Capital City, November 19-24
Hanoi (like Ho Chi Minh) has plenty to do. It’s a bustling city filled with shopping, historical sites, cafes, and is the central hub of the North. From Hanoi, you can take an overnight bus out to rice fields in mountain town of Sapa, get away to the remote resorts of Ninh Binh, or take a day trip to the coast to do a cruise in Ha Long Bay.
Things we liked about Hanoi:
- Endless things to do – we wandered a shopping mall, ate at local cafes, took a grab to the central lake, and enjoyed coffee at some really unique cafes
- Watched a traditional water puppetry show
- It was great to have so many cafes, smoothie stands, and fresh fruit markets steps from our hotel, so we could go back and forth to our hotel room and get caught up.
- Enjoyed the mix of historic Hanoi (dating back to 800s – and probably earlier) and new development like the largest underground mall in Vietnam.
- Visiting the Hanoi Train Street
- We made an evening of walking through the Old Quarter and the French Quarter
Things to consider:
- We stayed in Hanoi for 6 days, which included some downtime. If we were trying to just fill our schedule, 2 or 3 days could have been enough, but if you’d like somewhere to settle in, the Old Quarter or French Quarter both have plenty of activity and options for cafes, historic sites, markets, and street vendors where you could stay for months and never run out of things to discover.
Hotel Cost in Hanoi: We stayed outside the city center, at a hotel near the Vincom Megamall Royal City for $40/night for 2 rooms (one with 2 doubles and a balcony, and one with 1 queen bed). This area was great for shopping, wandering, and getting groceries, and not too far out of the way to catch a ride into the city.
Being the capital city, Hanoi hotels can range from quaint places like the one we chose to thousands of dollars per night for visiting dignitaries and government officials. If we went back, we would probably pay just a little more for a hotel near the Hanoi Old Quarter to be a bit more walkable to the historic sites.
Hanoi > Sapa – 6-hour Day trip on a sleeper bus
Traveling from Hanoi to Sapa by Sleeper bus (during the day)
Sapa, November 24-28
This was a fun Golden Hand with the mountains in the background
Sapa, Vietnam (like Dalat) became popular as a mountain resort – an escape from the heat and humidity of Hanoi. It was originally just an agricultural community and was turned into a resort destination by the French army during the colonization. Now, it’s a full-on resort town in the mountains – something similar to Gatlinburg, TN, or Branson, MO, or Banff, Alberta, and the home base for Sunworld Fansipan Legend a funicular and cable car that take you across the valley and up to a shopping and restaurant complex in the mountains (Fansipan being the highest peak in the area’s mountain range)
What we enjoyed about Sapa:
- A break from the humidity in Hanoi. Hanoi wasn’t specifically hot in November, but Sapa in November got close to freezing each night, so it was a nice change
- Beautiful scenery of the staggered rice fields in the mountains
- Plenty of touristy things to do, but affordable to stay and eat
What we did in Sapa
- Rode the rainbow slide (a thousand times) at Sapa Green Valley (Thung Lung Xanh)
- Took photos, rode the rainbow slide, and played on electric go karts at Swing Sapa
- Hiked at Silver Waterfall (just outside of the city)
- Enjoyed coffee overlooking the valley at VietTrecking (Actually, we sat at the restaurant next to it, but can’t find it on Google!)
- Walked the downtown area after dark with the whole city lit up
- Watched sunset from the top floor of Vua Bep Coffee Lounge (in our opinion, the best spot for sunset!)
- Spent a couple of hours at Sapa Museum learning about the history of Sapa and the culture of the tribes in the area
- Visited the night market
What we skipped:
- Sunworld Fanispan Legend. It’s a funicular ride from Sun Plaza downtown Sapa to a cable car ride through the mountains to Fanispan (the highest peak in the area), where Sunworld has set up a shopping plaza, restaurant, and photo spots with statues.
- Moana (a popular spot for photos and statues)
- Sapa Alpine Coaster
- Cat Cat Village – a tourist village setup to represent what life was like in the mountains before Sapa was established
- Kart racing (similar to the Mario Kart experience in Dalat)
Hotel Costs in Sapa: We stayed just north of the city center in an area called Xom 1A. It was $13/night per room (2 rooms) and Grab app took us from the hotel to the city center in 6 minutes. When you’re booking a hotel in Sapa, the area between the lake and Sun Plaza is the busiest part of the city, so if you want to be close to the action, book there. If you want something quieter, book a little farther from the lake and downtown core.
A quick note, some hotels in Sapa don’t have A/C since the weather is cool for much of the year. Just keep that in mind if it’s a must for you or if you think there’s a chance you might get a warm snap during your summer visit. It was nearly freezing every night we were there in November (low of 3 degrees Celsius, 37 degrees Fahrenheit).
There’s no shortage of things to do in Sapa:
We chose a sleeper bus from Sapa to Halong. There are sleeper trains that will take you to Hanoi, but we decided on the bus that would take us on to Halong
Ha Long, November 29-December 4
- Since it was off-season, the city felt really local. Once we found the downtown restaurants, it was mostly locals going about their business and eating in unassuming cafes. We got hair cuts for about $7/person and had great meals for $3-$5/person.
- We liked that it was quiet. It was an interesting break from the big city of Hanoi and the constant tourism buzz of Sapa.
- We visited Sunworld Ha Long Bay (made up of 3 parks: Dragon Park theme park, a. waterpark (that was closed for the season) and Sun Hills, a park accessible by a cable car over the bay – we timed it perfectly for sunset!
- There was an light show at Halo Bay which was walking distance from our hotel in the evenings
- We visited a fun little petting zoo with a rainbow slide cat Tuan Chau Farm. It was quiet at the park, so we got to enjoy our time there
What we didn’t like:
- We chose a hotel on the west side of Ha Long (near Tuan Chau Island wher e most day cruises leave from) that was a great price and had lots of cafes and restaurants nearby on Google maps. When we arrived, none of those cafes or restaurants were open (and some didn’t seem to exist), so maybe they exist in the busy season – or maybe not.
Hotel Costs: $14/night per room. We booked two rooms. We would recommend choosing a hotel in Halong in or around the Sunworld area. We didn’t know when we booked ours that it would be in a nearly-abandoned neighborhood of warehouses, but it was a great price! It was easy to get a grab to take us into town, but we had to either go into town or get food delivery to eat since there was nothing nearby.
What we did in Ha Long:
- Visited Sunworld Ha Long – both Dragon Park and Sun Hills. We could have split this into two days, since Dragon Park was during the day, and we decided to visit Sunworld via the Queen Cable Car in the evening.
- Watched the Halo Bay light show – the schedule said the show started at 7:30 pm, and it promptly began at 8:02 – maybe we misunderstood.
- Took a day cruise in Ha Long Bay.
- Visited Tuan Chau Farm on Tuan Chau Island. There is a park called Tuan Chau Park with lots of photo spots, rides, and a dolphin show, but we didn’t realize that in the off-season, it’s only open on weekends, so we visited the farm instead.
Ha Long > Haiphong via Grab (Uber) – 40 minute drive
From Ha Long to Haiphong we took a grab (the local version of Uber)
Haiphong, December 4-6
Haiphong seems like a very industrial town. When we drove in from Halong, we passed a car manufacturing plant, and then for miles, it seemed like every business was either a cafe or a mechanic. There were transport trucks, cars, and motorbikes at every shop, so we imagine that the factory naturally brings in people mechanics.
Haiphong has plenty of French architecture left from the colonization (about 1700s), and we mostly just wandered the streets and parks near our hotel, walked down to the river, and caught our breath after moving so quickly for the past few weeks.
We got a hotel in the Le Chan area, which was recommended to us as a walkable area for first-time visitors to Haiphong. Location was great with coffee shops, street restaurants, evening food carts, and a park across the road. Like most big cities in Vietnam, you can stay at a local hotel in Haiphong for $22/night as we did, or you can stay at a chain brand like Sheraton for $70-$80/night.
There is a VinWonders in Haiphong, but after having visited multiple other theme parks, we realized that there wasn’t anything new at this park that we hadn’t experienced at other parks. We went for an evening walk down to the river. In early December, a lot of the city is lit of for Christmas, so we enjoyed the Christmas lights.
Haiphong > Ho Chi Minh (Flight booked with Skyscanner)
Flight from Hai Phong to Ho Chi Minh City
Ho Chi Minh City
1 night before flying out to Perth, Australia (yep, you guessed. Flights booked through Skyscanner)
We would love to say we “touristed” every last minute of our time in Ho Chi Minh, but frankly, we got a grab from the airport to our hotel nearby, walked to a pho restaurant, and the next morning, we go breakfast, wandered a mall nearby, and spent the afternoon going to the movies before grabbing dinner and heading back to the airport for an overnight flight to Perth.
There are plenty of family-friendly activities in Ho Chi Minh, so be sure to plan at least a few days here if you’re traveling to southern Vietnam.
