Northern Vietnam Highlights - 8 Days

This journey is real. Yours will be your own version of it.

Eight days, one base, and three very different places within a day's reach of it.

Hanoi does the work of a hub without being treated as a waiting room. The first evening is a private food tour on foot, six to eight tastings through streets that do not appear in guidebooks, ending at Hoan Kiem Lake as the lights come on. Later there is a vintage jeep morning through the French Quarter, past Ba Dinh Square and around West Lake to Tran Quoc, the oldest pagoda in the city, founded in the sixth century.

Out from there, the country opens in three directions. South to Ninh Binh, where limestone towers rise out of rice paddy and the boats are rowed by hand, often with the rower's feet. Northwest overnight to Sapa, where a cable car climbs 1,400 vertical metres to the highest point in mainland Southeast Asia. East to Ha Long Bay, for a night at anchor among the karst.