Three countries, twenty-one nights, one party at a time

Arrive Hanoi

Met at Noi Bai and driven into the city, about 45 minutes outside rush hour and an hour inside it. Nothing is scheduled. If you land in the morning, the walk that makes sense is the lake and the streets east of it, on foot, until the jet lag wins.

Hanoi on foot

The Old Quarter in the morning with a guide who lives in it: thirty-six streets still named for the trade that occupied them, the two-metre-wide houses that resulted from a tax on street frontage, and the train line that runs through the middle of a residential block.

The afternoon is the other Hanoi, the one built between 1888 and 1954: the French quarter, the Temple of Literature, and a long lunch somewhere with ceiling fans.

Hanoi, or out of it

A free day, and we push people to leave the city for it. The Duong Lam ancient village is 50 km west, an hour each way, and holds laterite houses that predate the French by three centuries. The alternative is the ceramic kilns at Bat Trang, twenty minutes away, which is the easier day.

Hanoi to Lan Ha Bay

Leave at 08:00 on the Hai Phong expressway, which turned a five-hour drive into a bit over two. Board around noon at a harbour on the Cat Ba side, which is the quieter half of the same water: Lan Ha holds a fraction of the boats that work Ha Long, and the difference is audible.

The afternoon is kayaking and swimming from the boat, and a cave the tenders reach at low tide. Sunset is at anchor.

Lan Ha to Ninh Binh

Back to the pier by 11:00, then three and a half hours south to Ninh Binh, through the Red River delta. The afternoon is deliberately empty; the light here is worth waiting for.

Ninh Binh

A rowed sampan at Trang An in the early morning, before the domestic groups arrive from Hanoi: three hours through nine flooded caves, rowed by a woman who does it with her feet. Afterwards, the Bich Dong pagoda cut into the cliff, and 500 steps up Hang Mua for the view along the valley if the knees agree.

Ninh Binh to Hue

A morning flight from Hanoi, or the overnight train the night before if you want the Hai Van coast at dawn. Most people fly and use the afternoon: the citadel, which is still being rebuilt from 1968, and an hour on the Perfume River.

Hue

The imperial tombs are scattered along the river south of the city and the three worth the day are Minh Mang for its symmetry, Tu Duc for its lake and its self-written epitaph, and Khai Dinh for the fact that it is concrete and unrepentant about it.

Lunch is the reason many people rate Hue above Hanoi for food. It is a court cuisine: small dishes, a great deal of them, none of them large.

Hue to Hoi An over the Hai Van Pass

Leave at 08:30 and take the old pass road rather than the tunnel: 21 km of switchbacks above the sea, about an hour longer, and the only part of the drive anyone remembers. Stop at the top before eleven, when the coaches reach it.

Lanterns aside, Hoi An is a trading port that silted up in the nineteenth century and was too poor to knock itself down, which is why the merchant houses are still standing. The old town closes to traffic from 09:00, and again after 18:00.

Hoi An

A morning in the old town with a guide, then the afternoon free. The tailors are real but need 48 hours to do anything worth wearing, so this is the day to start if you want a suit rather than a souvenir.

Hoi An, free

Nothing scheduled. The options we push hardest are the bicycle route through the rice to Tra Que, which is flat and takes a morning, and the boat to the Cham Islands, which only runs between March and September and only when the sea allows it.

Hoi An to Luang Prabang

A long transit day and there is no way to shorten it: 45 minutes to Da Nang, then two flights with a connection in Hanoi, landing in Luang Prabang in the late afternoon. We build the connection with two and a half hours in Hanoi rather than the ninety minutes the airline will sell you.

You arrive into a town of 55,000 people where the tallest thing is a hill with a temple on it.

Luang Prabang

The alms round happens at first light along the main street and it is a religious observance, not a display. We watch it from a distance, seated, without flash, and we do not buy the rice sold to tourists at the roadside, which is not what the monks are meant to receive. If that framing sounds like too much trouble, sleep in; the town is worth the extra hour anyway.

Later: the royal palace, Wat Xieng Thong at the tip of the peninsula, and the climb up Phou Si, which is 328 steps and best at four rather than at sunset when the summit is shoulder to shoulder.

Kuang Si and the villages

Kuang Si falls are 29 km south, an hour by road because the last stretch is slow. Go at opening and you get the turquoise pools without the crowd; the water is cold enough to hurt and everybody swims anyway. The bear sanctuary at the entrance is a genuine rescue operation, not a photo attraction.

Luang Prabang to Nong Khiaw

Three hours north on a road that climbs and does not stop climbing, into the limestone. Nong Khiaw sits where the Nam Ou runs between two walls of rock. There is no ATM worth relying on and the electricity is not guaranteed after ten at night.

Nong Khiaw

The viewpoint above the town is 1 hour 20 minutes up a steep, rooted path with a rope handline in two places. It is the hardest hour of this journey and the reason many people book it. Those who would rather not take a boat upriver to Muang Ngoi instead, an hour each way, to a village the road still has not reached.

Nong Khiaw to Phnom Penh

Back to Luang Prabang in the morning, then the afternoon flight to Phnom Penh via Vientiane, about five hours door to door with the connection. Evening free.

Phnom Penh

The morning is Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek, and it is not a comfortable morning. We use a guide who lost family in it and who will answer questions rather than recite. Nobody should visit Cambodia for two weeks and skip this; equally, nobody should do it and then be handed a lunch menu at noon, so the afternoon is deliberately quiet.

Later, if you want it: the National Museum, which holds the Angkorian sculpture that is not at the temples, and is the best possible preparation for the next three days.

Phnom Penh to Siem Reap

A 45-minute flight rather than the six-hour road, then 50 minutes from the new airport into town — it opened in 2023 some 50 km out, and arrival days that still assume the old airport get this wrong. Late afternoon at Angkor Wat, which most people visit at dawn and which is emptier and better lit at five.

Angkor: the great circuit

Bayon at opening, when the 200 faces still have shadow on them, then the Baphuon, the Terrace of the Elephants and Ta Prohm before the middle of the day. We break from 11:30 to 15:00, because walking sandstone at 35 degrees is how people end up hating Angkor.

Banteay Srei and the water

Banteay Srei is 37 km out, an hour each way, and it is the one temple where the carving rather than the scale is the point: pink sandstone, cut deep, still sharp after eleven centuries. Afterwards Beng Mealea if you want ruin without restoration, or the floating village at Kampong Phluk in the late afternoon, which is honest about being a working place rather than a display.

Depart Siem Reap

Breakfast, then the drive to the airport, which needs 50 minutes plus a margin. Late departures get a day room rather than a lobby.