7 Best Places to Visit in Vietnam

Vietnam runs nearly 1,650 kilometers north to south, and it packs a different landscape and a different chapter of history into almost every stop along the way. Here are seven places worth building a trip around, and how to stay connected while you visit them.

1. Ha Long Bay

This UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Gulf of Tonkin holds close to 2,000 limestone karsts and islets rising out of emerald water, most of them uninhabited and covered in rainforest. Overnight cruises are the standard way to see it, threading between the islands and stopping at caves like Sung Sot (Surprise Cave) and floating fishing villages.

2. Hoi An Ancient Town

A former trading port on Vietnam's central coast, Hoi An's Old Town was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999 for its unusually intact mix of Vietnamese, Chinese, and Japanese architecture, including the 18th-century Japanese Covered Bridge. The whole town switches to lantern light after dark, especially during the monthly Full Moon Lantern Festival.

3. Hanoi Old Quarter

Vietnam's capital built its identity around 36 narrow streets, each historically named for the guild that traded there — Silk Street, Silver Street, and so on. Hoan Kiem Lake sits at its edge, with the red Huc Bridge leading to the small Ngoc Son Temple, and French colonial buildings from the early 1900s still line several nearby boulevards.

4. Cu Chi Tunnels

Northwest of Ho Chi Minh City, this 250-kilometer network of underground tunnels was dug by hand and used by Viet Cong fighters during the Vietnam War for shelter, supply routes, and field hospitals. Visitors can crawl through widened sections of the original tunnels and see the trapdoor entrances and air vents designed to stay hidden in plain jungle.

5. Ho Chi Minh City

Vietnam's largest city, still widely called Saigon, pairs French colonial landmarks like the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica and Central Post Office with the Reunification Palace, where a North Vietnamese tank famously crashed through the gates in 1975. Ben Thanh Market and the city's dense grid of motorbike traffic give a much faster read on modern Vietnam than its older cities do.

6. Sapa

This hill town in Vietnam's far north sits near Fansipan, the highest peak in Indochina at 3,147 meters, now reachable by the world's longest non-stop cable car as well as on foot. The surrounding valleys are terraced with rice paddies tended by Hmong, Dao, and other ethnic minority communities, best seen on multi-day treks between villages.

7. Hue

The seat of the Nguyen Dynasty from 1802 to 1945, Hue's walled Imperial City was modeled partly on Beijing's Forbidden City and today forms part of a UNESCO World Heritage complex along with the dynasty's elaborate royal tombs scattered along the Perfume River. Large sections were damaged during the Battle of Hue in 1968, and restoration work on the citadel is still ongoing.

Staying connected while you travel

Vietnam has fast, widely available 4G coverage even outside the big cities, with 5G rolling out in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City — setting up an eSIM before you land means you're online the moment you touch down, without hunting for a SIM kiosk at the airport.

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