Explore Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City

Vietnam's pulsing economic engine and largest city, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) throws together French colonial architecture, glass skyscrapers, and a street-food scene that runs around the clock. The War Remnants Museum and Củ Chi Tunnels offer sobering counterpoints to the city's relentless forward momentum.

Hanoi

Vietnam's millennium-old capital wears its history more visibly than any other city in the country — the Old Quarter's 36 guild streets, Hồ Hoàn Kiếm Lake, and the Temple of Literature all sit within easy walking distance of one another. French boulevards shaded by banyan trees give the city a surprisingly romantic atmosphere, especially in the misty winter months.

Hội An

A UNESCO-listed ancient trading port on the Thu Bồn River, Hội An is perhaps Vietnam's most photogenic town, its lantern-lit streets lined with merchant houses, tailor shops, and Japanese-influenced covered bridges. The beaches of Cửa Đại are a short bike ride away, making it easy to balance old-town wandering with seaside relaxation.

Hạ Long City

The gateway to Hạ Long Bay — one of Asia's most iconic seascapes — where nearly 2,000 limestone karst pillars rise from jade-green waters in northeastern Vietnam. Overnight cruises through the bay, paddling into sea caves, and kayaking around Cat Ba Island are the quintessential experiences here.

Huế

The former imperial capital of the Nguyễn dynasty sits astride the Perfume River, its walled Citadel and elaborate royal tombs scattered across the surrounding hills forming Vietnam's most intact ensemble of feudal-era architecture. The city's royal cuisine — once prepared for emperors — is considered by many Vietnamese to be the country's most refined.

Đà Nẵng

Vietnam's third-largest city has transformed from a war-era port into one of Southeast Asia's most appealing beach cities, with the 30-kilometre Mỹ Khê coast, the Dragon Bridge, and easy day-trip access to both Hội An and the Marble Mountains. The Bà Nà Hills cable-car ride to a hilltop French village — complete with the famous Golden Bridge held by giant stone hands — has become one of Vietnam's most-shared images.

Sapa

Perched at nearly 1,600 metres in the Hoàng Liên Son Mountains near the Chinese border, Sapa is the launchpad for trekking through spectacular terraced rice-field valleys inhabited by the H'Mong, Dao, and Tày ethnic minorities. The climb to Fansipan — Indochina's highest peak at 3,143 m — can be completed by cable car or on foot.

Nha Trang

Vietnam's beach resort capital stretches along a crescent of white sand backed by the green hills of the South Central Coast, with warm, clear water ideal for snorkelling and diving around the offshore island chain. The ancient Cham towers of Po Nagar, still an active Hindu pilgrimage site, rise above the mouth of the Cai River on the city's northern edge.

Đà Lạt

Built as a French hill-station retreat in the Central Highlands at 1,500 metres above sea level, Đà Lạt has an almost surreal European feel — pine forests, strawberry farms, Art Deco villas, and a year-round spring climate that makes it Vietnam's flower-growing capital. It's the country's premier destination for coffee-farm tours, mountain biking, and canyoning.

Mũi Né

A narrow fishing-village peninsula on the South Central Coast that has become Vietnam's kite-surfing mecca thanks to its consistent trade winds, with the towering red and white sand dunes of Bàu Trắng making for an incongruously Saharan landscape. Fresh seafood pulled straight from the boats each morning lines the local restaurants here.

Phú Quốc

Vietnam's largest island, a short flight from Ho Chi Minh City in the Gulf of Thailand, hosts some of the country's most beautiful beaches — An Thới in the south for snorkelling, Long Beach for sunsets — along with the lush jungle of Phú Quốc National Park. The island is famed for its production of nước mắm (fish sauce), considered by many chefs to be the finest in Vietnam.

Ninh Bình

Often called 'Hạ Long Bay on land,' Ninh Bình province is a maze of limestone karst formations rising from flat rice paddies, best explored by rowboat through the cave-studded waterways of Tràng An — now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The ancient capital of Hoa Lư and the mountain-top pagodas of Bích Động are within easy cycling distance.

Phong Nha

Deep in Quảng Bình province, the Phong Nha–Kẻ Bàng karst plateau conceals some of the world's most spectacular cave systems, including Sơn Đoòng — the planet's largest known cave passage, big enough to fit a Boeing 747. Multi-day jungle treks, underground river kayaking, and rappelling into 'dark caves' have built a growing adventure-tourism scene here.

Cần Thơ

The informal capital of the Mekong Delta is the best base for exploring the region's legendary floating markets, where vendors still sell tropical fruit and vegetables from their boats as they have for centuries. The surrounding delta labyrinth of canals, orchards, and stilted villages is best explored by bicycle and motorised sampan.

Hà Giang

Vietnam's northernmost province, bordering China, contains some of the country's most dramatic mountain scenery — the Đồng Văn Karst Plateau Geopark, the hairpin bends of the Mã Pì Lèng Pass, and the buckwheat-flower valleys of the Đồng Văn district. The 'Ha Giang loop' motorbike circuit has become a rite of passage for adventurous travellers.

Mai Châu

A tranquil valley two hours southwest of Hanoi, Mai Châu is home to the White Thái ethnic minority and their traditional stilt-house villages set among terraced rice fields and forested limestone ridges. It's one of the easiest highlands escapes from the capital, with excellent local weaving cooperatives and guided cycling routes into the surrounding hills.

Hội An (Marble Mountains)

The Marble Mountains — five limestone and marble outcrops rising from the coastal plain south of Đà Nẵng — are riddled with Buddhist sanctuaries, Hindu vestiges of the Cham civilisation, and cave pagodas that served as Viet Cong field hospitals during the war. Local marble-carving workshops at the mountain's base have operated for generations.

Mỹ Sơn

Hidden in a jungle-ringed valley 70 km south of Đà Nẵng, Mỹ Sơn was the religious and intellectual capital of the ancient Cham kingdom from the 4th to the 13th centuries, its red-brick towers dedicated to Shiva now listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Many towers were damaged by U.S. bombing during the Vietnam War, lending the site a poignant, Angkor-like atmosphere.

Buôn Ma Thuột

The unofficial coffee capital of Vietnam sits at the heart of Đắk Lắk province in the Central Highlands, where rolling red-soil plateaus are blanketed in Robusta coffee, pepper, and cacao plantations. The surrounding region is home to more than 40 ethnic minorities and the Yok Don National Park — Vietnam's largest protected area and the best place to see wild elephants.

Vũng Tàu

The nearest beach resort to Ho Chi Minh City — a two-hour speedboat ride down the Saigon River — Vũng Tàu occupies a small peninsula bookended by two hills, each topped with a Jesus statue (the larger at 32 metres rivals Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer in local affection). It remains a popular weekend retreat for Saigonites and a significant offshore oil-industry hub.

The former imperial capital of the Nguyễn dynasty (1802–1945) preserves an extraordinary ensemble of palaces, temples, citadels, and royal tombs strung along the Perfume River in central Vietnam. The walled Imperial Citadel, modelled on Beijing's Forbidden City but adapted to Vietnamese aesthetic sensibilities, forms the centrepiece of a complex that vividly reflects the synthesis of Vietnamese traditions with Confucian ideals.

Nearly 2,000 limestone and dolomite karst pillars rise from the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin in a seascape that has defined Vietnam's international image for generations. The bay's grottoes, floating fishing villages, and endemic biodiversity — including the white-headed langur found only on Cat Ba Island — earned it UNESCO inscription for both natural beauty and geological significance.

An exceptionally well-preserved example of a Southeast Asian trading port from the 15th to 19th centuries, Hội An's Old Quarter blends Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and European architectural influences in a way found nowhere else in the region. The covered Japanese Covered Bridge, merchants' assembly halls, and wooden tube houses have remained virtually unchanged since the town's heyday as a major port on the maritime Silk Road.

Built between the 4th and 13th centuries as the political and spiritual capital of the Cham Kingdom, Mỹ Sơn is the most significant Hindu temple complex in Southeast Asia outside of Cambodia's Angkor Wat. The red-brick towers — dedicated to the god Shiva — represent a remarkable local adaptation of Indian Shaivite iconography and architectural forms.

This karst mountain massif in north-central Vietnam contains the world's largest cave (Sơn Đoòng), more than 300 cave systems, and one of the most significant examples of karst topography in Asia. The park's ancient forests shelter populations of endangered primates, tigers, Asian elephants, and the critically endangered saola — one of the world's rarest large mammals.

Excavations beneath Hanoi's Ba Đình district have revealed stratified remains from the 7th century through the 20th — an unbroken sequence of Vietnamese imperial capitals built atop one another over thirteen centuries. The archaeological site includes the foundations of royal palaces, gardens, and military headquarters, illuminating the continuity of Vietnamese civilisation at a depth found nowhere else in the region.

Built in just three months in 1397 by the short-lived Hồ Dynasty in Thanh Hóa province, this massive stone citadel represents the culmination of a Vietnamese architectural tradition that had evolved over millennia. The walls — constructed from enormous blocks of green schist stone fitted together without mortar — demonstrate an extraordinary mastery of stonecraft and stand as a testimony to the ambitions of the dynasty that briefly unified Vietnam.

Centred on the ancient capital region of Ninh Bình south of Hanoi, Tràng An is Vietnam's first and only mixed UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognised for both its geological and cultural values. The karst landscape — a maze of towering limestone peaks, hidden valleys, and subterranean rivers — contains evidence of continuous human habitation stretching back 30,000 years and was the setting for the ancient capitals of Hoa Lư.

Inscribed in 2025, this transnational serial site encompasses the sacred mountain of Yên Tử — birthplace of the distinctly Vietnamese Trúc Lâm Zen Buddhist school founded by Emperor Trần Nhân Tông in the 13th century — along with associated monasteries, pagodas, and pilgrimage routes in Quảng Ninh and Bắc Giang provinces. The complex remains a living pilgrimage destination where hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese make the ascent on foot each spring.