Dongmin Seo 
Here is what Hanoi actually costs in September 2026, from receipts and price tags rather than estimates: a GrabCar ride runs about 13,000–16,000₫ per kilometre on short city hops (my last eight rides, 1.25 to 7.24 km, cost 42,000–100,000₫ each), Vietnamese vegetables at a supermarket are roughly a dollar an item, and anything imported — … Read more
Tet 2027 — Vietnam’s Lunar New Year — falls on Saturday, February 6, 2027, and the country effectively stops from Thursday, February 4 to Wednesday, February 10. Family restaurants, wet markets, museums and every government office close for three to five days around the date, domestic flights and trains sell out weeks ahead, and beach-resort … Read more
Here is the 2026 Vietnam visa answer in one breath: if you hold a passport from the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea or one of 24 listed countries, you enter visa-free for up to 45 days; if you are American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, Irish or most other nationalities, you … Read more
Vietnam is 1,700 kilometers tall and maybe 50 wide in places, and that shape decides how you should move through it. The honest answer: fly the long jumps, take a limousine van for the 2–4 hour hops, ride the train once for the coast between Hue and Da Nang, and let Grab handle everything inside … Read more
Sapa is the most famous mountain town in Vietnam and the most misunderstood stop on the northern circuit. The photos promise rice terraces pouring down a valley wall; the bus drops you in a construction zone with karaoke bars and a fake Eiffel tower. Both are real. The honest answer: Sapa town is a gate, … Read more
Hoi An is the smallest great food town in Vietnam, and it holds a card no other city can play: dishes that exist nowhere else on earth. Hanoi perfected the specialist shop, Saigon collected the whole country’s kitchen — Hoi An kept a handful of recipes so local that leaving town technically means leaving the … Read more
Let us be honest before the bus leaves: Vung Tau is not the beach you came to Vietnam for. We have said as much in our Saigon guide — if you want clear water, the real beach is a 55-minute flight. And yet we keep recommending this day trip, because Vung Tau is not really … Read more
Hanoi perfected Vietnamese food; Saigon collected it. For three centuries this port city has absorbed cooks from the Mekong Delta, central Vietnam, southern China and, briefly, France — and every wave left dishes behind. The result is the widest eating in the country: sweeter than the north, louder, open later, and gloriously unbothered by tradition … Read more
Hanoi is the deepest food city in Vietnam, and it runs on a system most visitors never decode: the specialist shop. A Hanoi kitchen does not have a menu — it has a dish, usually one, often unchanged for two or three generations, served at the hours that dish has always been served and not … Read more
Hue is the most misjudged stop on the Vietnam trail. It gets budgeted half a day — a citadel sprint between Hoi An and the next bus — and then quietly becomes the place travelers say they wish they had stayed. The fix is not more sights; it is more hours at the right times. … Read more