Vietnam Itinerary 2017

Madeleine Knight
Jun 1, 2017
7 min read

Vietnam is one of the most beautiful and interesting countries I have had the pleasure to explore! Within 1 month we travelled 3500km on our 2006 Yamaha Nuovo – 2 people, 1 20kg backpack, tent, sleeping mats.... Everything you could need to survive packed onto the back of that bike, and she was such a trooper through the flats and highlands alike.

Below is a quick run through of our itinerary. Our original goal was to travel from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Hanoi, so a South to North journey, but we last minute decided to do North to South as our connecting flight left us in Hanoi for a night anyway.

All in all, the main goal was to travel the length of Vietnam and spend a little time in Mui Ne to chill out on the beaches and kite surf.

Hanoi

We spent more time in Hanoi than planned as we had looked at the bike market in Ho Chi Minh but not in Hanoi, so we spent a couple of days looking around at bikes. We didn't really see any of Hanoi itself, I found there wasn't much I wanted to see or do there anyway? It kind of felt like any other big city, but the party scene is pretty decent there, so depending on your purpose of travel Hanoi could be a good stop for you.

HaLong Bay

Of course we had to stop off in the famous HaLong Bay. We chilled here for a couple of days just enjoying riding the bike around and out of HaLong Itself, and we went on a boat tour of the bay as well. When it comes to tickets for the boat tour, don't go through your hotel/hostel or a travel agent, they will charge you $20 per person for a couple of hours tour when you can head down to Dao Tuan Chau (a small island a few kilometres away from HaLong Bay itself) and go to the Nha Ga Cang Tau Tuan Chau (Tuan Chau Tau Port Terminal) where you will find tours for $5 per person, which are the same itinerary and length as the ones you were earlier quoted $20 for. As always there are people waiting for naive foreigners like us and they will jump on you to sell you a ticket for 50,000VND more than the price inside... the equivalent of $2.

Nam Dinh

Nam Dinh was one of our stops due to necessity. Driving in Vietnam in the day is dangerous, at night it is just a little silly as trucks/ lorries/ buses/ cars/ other bikes will try to push you off the road. So we stopped in Nam Dinh, which is the capital of Nam Dinh province, but there is really nothing to do here. You will be stretched to find any accommodation under 200,000VND, so save yourself some time looking around and just accept the price is a little high. However, there are some nice places for a Vietnamese Coffee, so we spent an extra day here while we finished our Christmas/New Years Vlog.

Ninh Binh

Ninh Binh itself is rather uninteresting, but it is very close to Tam Coc National Park, which is absolutely beautiful to drive through. You can also do a tour of the caves here, but we chose to keep it simple and enjoy the scenery from our bike instead.

Ha Tian

The journey from Ninh Binh to Hue is far too many KM to do in a day (our longest day was around 320km, during this section of the journey), so to break up that journey we stayed in this tiny town.

Hue

We ended up spending around 4 days in Hue, enjoying a little bit of rain-free time (finally... it rained from Hanoi to Hue almost non-stop). We went to the Royal Citadel, entrance fee around 300,000VND (around $15) and ate a lot of good food and drank a lot of good – and some bad – alcohol. Hue is a nice city, where we finally found other foreigners after a week of travelling on our own. Hue is a popular tourist spot for a few reasons, but mainly for the Royal Citadel, which is pretty big and interesting but not so fun in the rain.

Tam Ky

Tam Ky was our next stop as we stopped at the Son My Memorial (entrance fee 10,000VND/$0.52 each). Son My saw one of the worst massacres in the Vietnam War, with over 500 local farming families killed due to incorrect American Intelligence Information. This chilling site has a small museum of very graphic photographs that really show the brutality that was brought upon the Vietnamese people. Definitely a worthwhile stop on your journey.

Tam Quong

We stopped here as there were some Cham Towers close by that we wanted to have a look at and fly the drone around. We thought they were closed when we got there due to a distinct lack of people, but they were just off the tourist trail which lead to a very enjoyable couple of hours in the sunshine. Entrance was around 15,000VND for us both ($0.75)

Nha Trang

We were in Nha Trang from Spring Festival Eve, so there was plenty going on along the waterfront, but we met a friend here so we spent our time chilling on the beach with good company. However, I warn you now that Nha Trang feels like any Western city as there is a huge population of foreigners here. You will also find a lot of signs/writing tends to be in Vietnamese and Russian as it is a hot spot for Russian tourists.

Dalat

The road from Nha Trang to Dalat was honestly one of my favourite parts of this whole journey! An absolutely beautiful section of road as you climb your way up into the highlands. Dalat itself is a very rich city, compared to some you may have seen along the way. This is where the French would come to get away from the heat of the lowlands and the coast, so there are many very big houses that are heavily influenced by French design. We saw Dalat for a couple of hours just riding around and exploring, then headed out the city as accommodation was so expensive ($600,000VND/$27 at the cheapest). We found a perfect camping spot in the forest not too far out. We also camped the next night by a hydroelectric dam, on our way to Pongour Waterfalls (entrance 25,000VND/$1.07) which was really worth the stop – but do get there early (the site opens at 8am) as it will get very busy after 10am.

Mui Ne

This location was our ultimate goal. Seeing the sign that says Mui Ne is 26km away instead of over 1000km away was the best feeling... Mui Ne is a tiny fishing town that happens to have amazing wind for water sports all year round. On a day with good wind the whole bay will be filled with kitesurfers, but you can also do wind surfing and surfing depending on the weather. The Kitesurf schools are dotted along the main stretch of beach and all of them offer around $50 per hour lessons, starting from 5 hours upwards. All the schools have instructors that speak a variety of languages, but all of them speak English and Russian.

Thuam Nam

This stop was once again a stop our of necessity. We went to see the Chu Chi Tunnels (entrance 22,000VND/$1 for us both) which was one of the best experiences in Vietnam! You are taught so much about the history of the tunnel system such as the overall length is around 250km and there are 3 levels at 3/4m, 6/7m and 9/10m below ground. Honestly very worth heading to!

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

We stopped here for only a day as we felt there were other, more interesting, places to see and things to do. However we did head into the War Remnants Museum (entrance 50,000VND/$2 for us both) which has 3 floors and 10 separate exhibitions dedicated to the men and women who lost there lives in the Vietnam War. From real-life jets, helicopters and tanks to very informative graphs about what/where/when etc, as well as a lot of graphic photographs. You will also come across a section on the Son My Massacre that I mentioned earlier.

My Tho

From Ho chi Minh we headed into the Mekong Delta, which has been on my bucket list for a very long time, so this was a dream come true for me. We stopped in My Tho and ate at an awesome street restaurant, then found accommodation (like Nam Dinh you wont find anything under 230,000VND/$10, unless you stay out of the city) and the next day worked on finding a tour to see the delta itself. This took some time and patience... All the tours offer the same for a similar price, and honestly we just wanted to see the delta, not the coconut candy factory or the bee farms or anything else... So we drove onto one off the islands instead of paying 200,000VND/$9 for a boat to take us there, explored and found a little river with a couple of ladies and a canoe, and paid them 100,000VND/$4.70 (they asked for 50,000 but we tipped them) for a 30/40minute journey down the river and back, with a chance to paddle ourselves and everything! So amazing, and exactly the experience we wanted!

Den Tho Thruong Dinh

This was a stop out of necessity, we found ourselves – after a long day of getting utterly lost in the Mekong Delta – stuck in the middle of nowhere in the dark and finally found a town with somewhere to sleep. There was a little hassle here due to miscommunications with a hotel and their policy of physically needing our passports to show the police instead of being able to show them a photograph of them... In the end though we got a room.

Vung Tau

There is a pretty nice lighthouse in Vung Tau, with a gorgeous view of the bay and their own version of Rio's Christ The Redeemer. Other than this, there was nothing of interest here.

Mui Ne

Why back to Mui Ne? Well when we were here before the wind wasn't right for a beginner kitesurfer, so we circled back around to this wonderful place for a couple of days. This time, however, the wind was slightly too good for a beginner! Either way we had a lot of fun and enjoyed our last bit of beach and sunshine before getting an overnight bus back to Ho Chi Minh City. We left our bike to a friend and paid 240,000VND/$10 for a relatively comfortable bus which took 6hrs to get us to the bus station in Ho Chi Minh City.

Ho Chi Minh City

From the bus station in Ho Chi Minh City, you need to get the number 119 bus to get to the International Airport. This takes around 1hr and costs 40,000VND/$1.80.