Our guide to Vietnam's top places, plus our lesser-known favourites
1,500 km from north to south and yet barely 50 km wide at its centre, Vietnam offers the chance to combine Asia’s quintessential landscapes with one visa, one currency, and one language.
Vietnam stretches the length of the Indochinese Peninsula, all the way from its cultural heartland in Hanoi, ringed by high mountains inhabited by isolated hilltribes, to the bountiful Mekong Delta in the far south, where floating markets overflow with the region's rich produce.
Central Vietnam boasts many of the country's cultural highlights, including the ruins of an ancient Hindu civilisation, the Citadel of the last Vietnamese emperors, and the evocative, once-great trading port of Hoi An.
Whether you’re trekking through the lush rice terraces of the north, cruising amongst the dramatic limestone pinnacles of Halong Bay, relaxing on Con Dao's deserted beaches or zipping along Ho Chi Minh's colonial boulevards on the back of a vintage Vespa, we challenge you not to be captivated by Vietnam.
“Going to Vietnam the first time was life-changing for sure. Maybe because it was all so new and different to my life before and the world I grew up in. The food, culture, landscape, and smell; they’re all inseparable. It just seemed like another planet; a delicious one that sort of sucked me in and never let go.” — Anthony Bourdain
