The Perfect 10-Day Vietnam Itinerary (Hanoi to the Mekong)

The spine of the trip never really changes, and that is a good thing — it has been refined by thousands of travellers before you into something that simply flows.

• Days 1-2: Hanoi. The old quarter, the lakes, the street food, a day to shake off the long-haul flight.
• Days 3-4: Halong Bay. A coach transfer out, then an overnight cruise on the limestone islands, kayaking and a sunrise on deck.
• Day 5: a short internal flight south to Danang, then straight to Hoi An.
• Days 5-7: Hoi An. The most charming stop on the whole route — tailors, a riverside old town closed to traffic, beaches and rice paddies a bike ride away.
• Day 8: fly Danang to Saigon. Reunification Palace, the War Remnants Museum, a first taste of the south's faster pulse.
• Days 9-10: Saigon and the Mekong Delta. A day on the river among the floating markets and fruit orchards, then your flight home out of Saigon.

The two internal flights (Hanoi-Danang and Danang-Saigon, on Vietnam Airlines or VietJet) are the glue. Booking them yourself adds €80-€150; almost every multi-day tour folds them into the headline price, which is the single best reason to let an operator handle the logistics rather than piecing the trip together flight by flight.

Most operators run exactly this arc as a 10 or 11-day package: Vietnam Tour Fun's "Astonishing Vietnam in 11 Days" at around €640 land, Legend Travel Group's 10-day Hanoi-departure trip at roughly €810, and Hoi An Express's 10-day Cultural Odyssey at €1,100 all trace it almost step for step.

Hanoi (days 1-2). Land, drop your bags and walk. The old quarter is a glorious tangle of trade streets, and you will clock 6-10 km without trying. Give the morning of day 2 to the Temple of Literature and the lake-island Ngoc Son pagoda, then spend the evening eating your way around: bun cha for lunch, egg coffee mid-afternoon, a beer on the corner of Ta Hien as the scooters thicken. Breakfast is at the hotel; lunch and dinner are yours to find, and a fine meal runs €5-€15.

Halong Bay (days 3-4). A three-hour coach run brings you to the pier and your overnight junk. The trick is to be on the water once the day boats have gone home — late-afternoon kayaking, squid-fishing after dinner, tai chi on deck as the karsts emerge from the morning mist. Pay to slip across to quieter Lan Ha Bay if your boat offers it.

Hoi An (days 5-7). Fly Hanoi-Danang in the morning and you are in Hoi An by lunch. This is where most travellers wish they had budgeted an extra night. Days here are unhurried: a fitting at a tailor, an afternoon cycling out through the rice paddies to An Bang beach, and the old town after dark when the lanterns come on and the cars are banned. A morning cooking class is the easy highlight.

Saigon and the Mekong (days 8-10). Fly Danang-Saigon. Day 8 is the city — the Reunification Palace, the sobering War Remnants Museum, a wander through Ben Thanh market. Day 9 is the Mekong: a boat among the floating markets at Cai Be or Can Tho, coconut-candy workshops and a lunch of river fish under the palms. Day 10 takes you home from Saigon, having travelled the full length of the country.

Seven or eight days is tight but workable, and the honest move is to cut the country in half rather than sprint the whole thing. Do the north — Hanoi, Halong Bay and a flight down to Hoi An — and skip Saigon. Or do the south — Saigon, the Mekong and a flight up to Hoi An — and skip Hanoi. Either gives you a proper first taste, with a land cost of €450-€750. What you cannot sensibly do in a week is the full Hanoi-to-Saigon arc; you would lose half your daylight to short internal flights and arrive home knowing only the inside of departure lounges.

If you can stretch to fourteen days, this is where Vietnam really opens up, and the budget barely moves. Realistic Asia's "Best Of Vietnam In 14 Days" at around €900 land is the one to measure against. The extra four days buy you a choice of one richer northern or southern leg: the rice terraces and a hill-tribe homestay around Sapa, the karst country and river caves of Ninh Binh on the way out of Hanoi, or beach time on Phu Quoc in the deep south. Slot Sapa or Ninh Binh in after Halong, before you fly down to Hoi An; slot Phu Quoc in after the Mekong, before you fly home.

Our steer: if this is your one shot at Southeast Asia, take the fourteen days. The marginal cost over a 10-day trip is small, and you go from a satisfying highlights reel to something that actually breathes.

Vietnam runs 1,650 km top to tail, and the weather breaks into three zones that stubbornly refuse to line up — which matters enormously on a north-to-south itinerary that crosses all three in ten days.

The one window that works just about everywhere is February to April, and March is the single strongest month: Halong Bay visibility is at its annual peak, Hoi An is dry and not under floodwater, and Saigon and the Mekong are firmly in their dry season. October is the month to dodge if your route includes the centre, because Hoi An floods with real regularity. The far north turns cold and misty in December and January, so pack layers if Sapa is on the cards.

One date to plan around: Tet, Vietnamese Lunar New Year, falls on 17 February 2026, and most operators pause departures roughly 14-22 February. Arrive from 23 February for the best run of all — excellent weather, normal prices and a country back to full swing. For the full month-by-month breakdown, region by region, see our guide to the best time to visit Vietnam.

Because the trip flows one way, you should fly one way: into Hanoi (HAN) and home out of Saigon (SGN) on a single open-jaw ticket. It usually prices within €50-€100 of a plain return, and it saves you a whole wasted day doubling back north to where you started. Shoulder-season economy returns run €550-€850 from Western Europe, roughly US$800-US$1,400 from North America and A$900-A$1,600 from Australia, the last often the cheapest given the shorter hop; peak Christmas and Tet fares climb 30-50% higher. Vietnam Airlines flies direct from several European cities in 11-12 hours, though one-stop routings through the Gulf or East Asia often price about the same in a nicer cabin and suit travellers from any continent.

On the operator side, the local specialists are the value play and cover the identical ground as the big international names: Realistic Asia, Legend Travel Group, Vietnam Tour Fun, Wonderscape Travel and Hoi An Express all run this 10-day arc daily out of Hanoi, with the internal flights and the Halong overnight folded in, from around €600-€1,100 land. G Adventures and Intrepid lay a more polished small-group experience over the same route for €1,200-€2,000 land, with a Western trip leader and a step up in hotels. For a fuller comparison of where your money goes, see our Vietnam tour cost breakdown.

This is exactly the friction Multiday.tours exists to remove. We price the tour and the open-jaw HAN-in, SGN-out flight from your airport together, show you one honest per-person total — around €1,400 all-in at the budget end of the 10-day trips — and hand you off to book the tour on TourRadar and the flight on Kiwi.com. You see the real cost of going before you commit to anything.