Colonial and wartime Saigon, the 250 km tunnel system at Cu Chi, and a day among the coconut canals of the Mekong Delta at Ben Tre.
Photo: Leo Cap / Unsplash
Day 1
Your guide meets you at Tan Son Nhat International Airport and transfers you to a hotel in the centre. The afternoon is on foot: the Reunification Palace, where a tank came through the gates on 30 April 1975 and the interior is preserved exactly as it was that day; then the Central Post Office, designed by Gustave Eiffel's firm, and Notre-Dame Cathedral, built from brick shipped out of Marseille. The day ends with free time at Ben Thanh market and a walk along Nguyen Hue promenade in the evening.
Day 2
We drive about 70 km north-west to Cu Chi. The network here once ran some 250 kilometres across three levels reaching 10 metres down, with Hoang Cam stoves that dispersed cooking smoke at a distance, field hospitals and wells. You can go through a stretch of tunnel that has been widened for visitors. In the afternoon we return to the city for the War Remnants Museum, with its documentary photography and outdoor collection of military hardware. It is a heavy day, and we leave the evening free.
Day 3
An early start for My Tho, about 70 km down the Trung Luong expressway. A boat takes you across the Tien River to Thoi Son islet, where you transfer to a hand-rowed sampan through narrow canals roofed over with nipa palm, then stop in an orchard for honey tea and a performance of don ca tai tu folk music. In the afternoon we cross to Ben Tre for a coconut candy workshop and a craft workshop that uses the trunk, husk and shell, before returning to the city. The evening is free.
Day 4
The morning is spent in Cho Lon, the oldest Chinese quarter in Vietnam, at Thien Hau Temple with its great incense coils hanging from the roof and Shiwan ceramic friezes along the ridgeline. There is time to browse Binh Tay market for gifts. Your guide transfers you to Tan Son Nhat International Airport, where the programme ends.
Four days in Ho Chi Minh City divides cleanly into three parts: the colonial centre, two sites about the war, and a day out in the delta. That structure is deliberate, so that nobody leaves with only one impression of the city.
Day two is the difficult one. Putting Cu Chi and the War Remnants Museum in the same day is a choice; splitting them across two days, in our experience, leaves both feeling unfinished. Your guide will give you the events and the context, and you can ask anything, including the hard questions. That evening is left completely free.
The stretch of tunnel open to visitors at Cu Chi has been widened from its original dimensions, but it is still low and dark; anyone uncomfortable in enclosed spaces can take the surface path and rejoin the group at the far end. The run down to My Tho and Ben Tre is about ninety minutes each way, enough to see the delta while still sleeping in the city. Group size and hotel category are agreed before the contract is signed.
Vietnam ToursThree UNESCO World Heritage sites within 150 km of each other, unhurried over four days — Da Nang's coast, Hoi An's lantern-lit old town and the imperial capital of Hue.
Vietnam ToursA day above the clouds — a record-setting cable car to 1,487 metres, the Golden Bridge held up by two giant stone hands, and a French village built in 1919.
Vietnam ToursA morning in a bamboo basket boat among the water palms of Cam Thanh, then an afternoon in Hoi An's old town that lasts until the lanterns come on.