Travelling vietnam in comfort

[Appleblum]

Is it possible? We have 2 weeks in December and DH is keen on Vietnam. Our children (9 and 10) are not interested and want to go back to Japan. The decision comes down to me as I'll be the one booking everything, and personally I don't mind vietnam if it can be done comfortably, but it seems to lack infrastructure and reviews seem very mixed.

There are plenty of nice hotels and restaurants in Vietnam. Grab (Asian version of Uber) is available in most towns. And you can also get a private driver easily for places 1-2 hours away, just ask your hotel to sort.

Long distance travel is trickier. Overnight trains are an efficient way to travel the country due to its shape, but they aren’t especially comfortable even the “luxury” ones. An experience though! You can use internal flights instead, they are cheap and fairly efficient, but not everywhere has an airport - for example if you want to go to the northern mountains, it’s train or a long coach journey (overnight coaches are not safe).

Walking around towns, ok some streets can be a bit scruffy, you may have to dodge a bit of rubbish etc but it’s not too bad. No beggars as I recall, no hassle to buy stuff. Main thing is not getting run over, the pavements are often full of parked mopeds or streetside cafe tables so you have to walk in the road for stretches. Crossing the road is interesting!!

To be honest the main issues for me with Vietnam were the sheer number of tourists (obviously we were part of this!) and the fact it isn’t remotely like I remembered it from 20 years ago, it is way way more developed with high rise hotels and mopeds instead of bikes etc. It wasn’t uncomfortable though, except for the overnight trains, and the fact we were packing up and moving every couple of days (my fault for trying to pack too much in!).

It certainly doesn’t lack infrastructure, not these days.

Have you looked at the weather in December? Vietnam has tricky weather and it’s hard to get good weather in all parts of the country at once. April is probably the best time. At Christmas with your age kids I’d look at Costa Rica, South Africa or west coast Thailand personally.

Does it have to be DIY?
We had a package tour last year, it's great to let other people do the organising.

South of Vietnam will have nicer weather than the other 2 parts at that time of the year.

The part about the trains really made me hesitate! I couldn't believe that a train journey from ho chi minh to hanoi would take the same amount of time as driving! And driving anywhere seems to take
ages as well.

December is supposed to be the start of their dry season with temperatures around 20 to 30 degrees so that sounds perfect for us.

Was it a private tour? We don't like travelling in groups.

Book it through trailfinders - they arrange everything . We travelled from top to bottom ( Hanoi , HalongBay , Hoi An , HoChi Minh ) as a family of 4 - 5 star hotels , private transfers and tours . Saw everything we wanted to in comfort . One of our best holidays - beautiful place .

There are literally hundreds of companies offering private tours. Google is your friend. Loads with sterling reputations.

Literally just returned from Vietnam!!

Wonderful place.

We went south to north - so Ho Chi Min city, Hoi An, Hue, Hanoi, Binh Minh / Tam Coc, Halong and Hanoi again.

Went with Intrepid - on one of their 'Comfort' classified tours, so internal flights, nice hotels, good standard of coach, etc. If you don't like groups (that's a shame from my point of view) I think they do bespoke. If not - then definitely Trailfinders.

Avoid the trains - there is literally one track between Hanoi and Hon Chi Minh City and apparently it's rough.

Roads are fine, internal flights with Air Vietnam good. Brand new airports and new looking planes. Hotels all very nice, most with swimming pools. Standard of cleanliness is high. And in our group of 12, no one suffered from hee-bee-jee-bees at all in 2 weeks. Cheaper than Japan. Food in local restaurants and even higher end hotel restaurants was embarrassingly cheap and, other than 1 instance, very good quality. The only criticism I have is all the beds were very hard.
Yes the road distances are long but it's a long thin country. The longest we drove was 4 hours from Binh Minh to Halong

We went to Halong Bay for an overnight stay on a boat. Wonderful experience but it will be incredibly crowded in December, as it was pretty busy last week which is low season.

Got to see things
prison in Hanoi,
Hoi An - chinese temples, bespoke tailoring, lovely beach
Street food tour in Saigon / central Ho Chi Minh
Mekong Delta boat trip
Halong Bay

How about an Asian cruise? See all the best bits and have some luxury too

No. but there were just 12 of us most of the time.

It was a 3-week tour of Vietnam, Halong Bay & Mekong cruises (the best bits for me), & Cambodia, & some people only did parts of it.

Just looked up and there is a super luxury train “The Vietage” which does look genuinely nice!

And there are lots and lots of companies who will happily sort you a bespoke itinerary with private drivers, flights, hotels etc. We crossed paths with a family travelling with Stubborn Mule - they seemed to be staying in quite a few of the same places I’d booked DIY’ing it!

This hotel is lovely
https://airaboutiquehanoi.com/rates

i wouldn’t want to drive myself in Vietnam — some of the driving is crazy. I feel you’re safer in a Grab car where they are used to the pace. However, apart from that, I felt very safe. The people were lovely overall.

And there are lots of luxury hotels

We stayed in their sister hotel on the beach near Hoi An - recommended. The La Siesta group is also a reliably nice option.

Rubbish can be a problem along the coast. Halong Bay was beautiful but the rubbish floating around spoiled it a bit - no one on our cruise fancied a swim. Our guide told us the estimated time for clean up was about 4 years - and that was last year. Same for Hoi An, too much rubbish on the beach, not convinced you’d want to even take your shoes off never mind go in for a dip.
And it was back packer central, the streets were very crowded with tourists, which gave it a bit of an artificially constructed feel. I felt like a walking dollar bill…everyone want to sell you something. Crossing the road was an adventure sport - you get the hang of it eventually but it can be quite terrifiying.
On the plus side even 5 star hotels were cheap, Grab was excellent, it felt safe, no road rage despite the apparent chaos.
I wouldn’t recommend it for more than one week, after that I was ready to go elsewhere.

We found no rubbish on the beach at Hoi An last week and there was no floating rubbish in Halong bay. We weren't allowed to swim off the boat - went to an artificial beach instead.

The traffic is crazy - do not even think about hiring a car. Was told if you wanted to hire a car in Bangkok, the car hire company would supply a driver and trust me when I say the traffic is Thailand is nothing compared to Vietnam...

How about a private tour, my family recently did one in China and it was amazing?

What was your weather like? I am looking at booking a trip to SE Asia for next summer but we also want warm/ hot weather....so not sure if July will be possible!

The weather can best be described as very hot (34-38 C) and very very humid. We sweated buckets! We were lucky as it only rained a couple of times in 2 weeks. They're having very wet weather at the moment. Certainly wouldn't be worried about it being not warm enough in July

This was several years ago now, and pre-kids, but we went in late Nov-mid Dec and thought it was a good time overall. It does depend a bit what you want to do and where you want to go because there is a big difference in the weather between the northern mountains and Mekong Delta, for example. The north was chillier and pretty foggy overall- still beautiful but we did miss out on some of the majestic views in the mountains because of the fog. I recall the central and southern parts to be good weather.

Yes we'll probably do that. We always go on private tours in china and they are amazing! But china's infrastructure is so developed and there are high speed trains and highways everywhere... i just didn't want to be stuck on a car for 18 hours in Vietnam even if it was with a driver!

We did 2.5 weeks in Vietnam and Cambodia and were perfectly comfortable. We booked through an agent in the UK who organised everything for us - internal flights, private transfers and private tours. Plenty of decent hotels. Grab taxis perfect for getting around locally. Had a brilliant holiday!