ITINERARIES - Two weeks

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With a domestic flight or two – which are cheap anyway – you can make it from Saigon to Hanoi, but you’ll have to make a sacrifice or two. I’d spend a day in Saigon, then take a two-day Mekong Delta trip. Skip Cu Chi and fly, or overnight train, to Nha Trang for a couple days on the water; then fly or bus to Hoi An (via Danang’s Airport perhaps), for a couple days of hoofing about the Chinese port town, beach-bumming and seeing Vietnam’s greatest archaeological site at My Son. Catch a bus four hours north to Hue for two days of tomb-hopping, then fly/bus/train to Hanoi for two days in the capital. If mountains outweigh water, train up to Sapa for a homestay in a Tay village; if not, go for a more relaxed two-day cruise of Halong Bay. If beaches aren’t that important, skip Nha Trang, so you can have an extra day in the Mekong or Sapa.

One possibility:

Day 1 Arrive in Saigon, arrange Mekong tour, see Reunification Palace
Day 2 Mekong Delta tour (day one)
Day 3 Mekong Delta (day two), return to Saigon
Day 4 Fly to Nha Trang, sit on that beach
Day 5 Nha Trang (overnight train/bus or fly to Danang)
Day 6 Hoi An, walk around center, go to beach
Day 7 Hoi An (bus to Hue)
Day 8 Hue, see Citadel and a couple tombs
Day 9 Hue (overnight train, fly to Hanoi)
Day 10 Hanoi, arrange Halong Bay tour, Old Quarter, Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum
Day 11 Hanoi, see Ethnology Museum, French Quarter
Day 12 Halong Bay Cruise (day one)
Day 13 Halong Bay Cruise (day two), return to Hanoi
Day 14 Leave Hanoi