Indochina destination specialist
Tours · Vietnam
Eleven days in Vietnam, designed around the children
A north-and-centre route with the drives cut to three hours or less, no departure before 08:30, interconnecting rooms wherever the hotel has them, and a pool at five of the six stops. Built for children roughly six to fourteen.
At a glance
- Length
- 11 days, 10 nights
- Group
- One family, or two up to 12
- Start
- Hanoi
- End
- Da Nang
- Effort
- Easy; longest drive 3 hours
- From
- USD 2,290 per adult
The route
Who this is for
This is for a family with children roughly six to fourteen who want to see the north and the centre of Vietnam without the trip becoming a series of long transfers. Every decision in the route was made against a single test: what happens at hour three in the car, and what happens at four in the afternoon when everyone has had enough.
Children under six can come, and we have run it with a four-year-old, but the balance shifts: the Trang An boat is two hours sitting still and the cooking class assumes a child can use a knife. Above about fifteen, most families are better off on the twelve-day north to south route, which goes further and asks more.
How this is built around children
Heat is the first. Between May and August, Ninh Binh and Hoi An sit at 33 to 36 degrees with high humidity, and children who are fine at 09:30 are finished by 13:00. The route is built to have them in a pool by then, but you should plan on two showers a day and no arguments about hats. The second is the road noise and the crossing of it: Hanoi traffic is loud and constant, and small children often need a day to stop finding it alarming, which is exactly why the first full day stays in the old quarter on foot rather than driving anywhere.
Day by day
Day 1
Arrive Hanoi
Met at Noi Bai and driven 35 kilometres into the city, about 50 minutes. The hotel is on the quieter western edge of the old quarter, with a pool on the roof, and check-in is held from 12:00 whatever time you land.
Nothing is scheduled. The guide comes to the hotel at 17:30 for twenty minutes to meet everyone and walk through the week, which works better with children than a briefing on the first morning.
Day 2
Hanoi on foot, and the puppets
The moment in the puppet theatre when the dragon comes out of the water and the whole front row moves backwards
Out at 09:00 for a walk through the old quarter that is deliberately short: two hours, three kilometres, and built around things a child can look at rather than dates they will not remember. The guild streets where a whole block sells one thing, a working temple, and the market at the hour the fish are still moving.
Back at the hotel by 11:30 for the pool and lunch. At 16:00 the water puppet theatre, which is 50 minutes, sits on water, has a live band at the side and needs no language at all. It is the single thing children mention most often when they write to us afterwards.
Day 3
Pottery at Bat Trang, then Ninh Binh
Away at 09:00 and across the river to Bat Trang, where the village has been making ceramics for 700 years. Two hours at a family workshop: everyone throws a pot, everyone fails at least once, and the pieces are fired and sent to your Hoi An hotel to collect at the end of the trip.
Lunch in the village, then two hours south to Ninh Binh, arriving mid-afternoon. The hotel is a low building among the limestone hills with a pool and a field; the rest of the day is yours and most children spend it in the water.
Day 4
Trang An by rowing boat, then bicycles
Lying flat in the bottom of the boat while it slides under a cave roof a hand's width above your face
At 09:00 to the Trang An jetty for the rowing boat, which takes two hours and goes through nine flooded caves, some of them low enough that everyone lies back in the boat. The boats are rowed, often by foot, by women from the surrounding villages, and they take four passengers, so a family of four gets one to themselves.
Back for lunch and the pool. At 16:00, when the heat drops, bicycles along the dyke paths through the rice: eight kilometres, entirely flat, with a stop at the goat farm. Child seats and small frames are booked with the hotel before you arrive.
Day 5
To Lan Ha Bay, and a night aboard
The stern platform, and the discovery that the water is 28 degrees
The longest drive of the trip, and it is three hours: away at 09:00 on the expressway to Haiphong, boarding the boat at 12:30. Lunch is served as the boat leaves the pier, which solves the usual problem of hungry children and a slow embarkation.
The afternoon is kayaks and swimming. The kayaks are double, an adult with a child, and we stay inside a sheltered arm of the bay where the water is flat. The boat has a platform a metre above the water at the stern; jumping off it is, by a distance, the most popular thirty minutes of the entire eleven days. Anchor for the night in a quiet inlet, dinner at 19:00, and squid fishing off the back afterwards for anyone still awake.
Day 6
Bay to Hoi An
The one early start: breakfast at 07:30, off the boat at 09:00, and twenty minutes to Cat Bi airport at Haiphong for the 11:40 flight to Da Nang. It is 80 minutes in the air and it saves a full day of driving.
Landed by 13:20, and 45 minutes down the coast road to Hoi An. The hotel is in the paddy fields ten minutes by bicycle from the old town and fifteen from the beach, with a pool the children will be in by 15:00. Nothing else today.
Day 7
Hoi An old town, early and then not at all
Out at 08:30 by bicycle, which is ten flat minutes, to be in the old town before the coach groups and while it is under 30 degrees. Two hours: the Japanese bridge, a merchant house that is still lived in, and the market. If anyone is having clothes made, this is the measuring appointment, and children who want something made get the same treatment as adults, which they enjoy more than they expect.
Back at the hotel by 11:30. The afternoon is the pool or the beach, and the old town in the evening is a different place again, with the lanterns lit and the boats on the river selling paper candles for 10,000 dong.
Day 8
Market, boat and cooking
At 09:00 to the central market with a cook rather than a guide, to buy for lunch: herbs, rice paper, a fish chosen while it is still moving. Then twenty minutes by basket boat and river boat to the cooking school on an island in the Thu Bon.
The class runs to 13:30 and makes four dishes. Children get their own station, a knife appropriate to their age, and the pancake pan, which is the one everybody wants. You eat what you cooked. Back at the hotel by 14:30 with the afternoon free.
Day 9
Rice fields, water buffalo, and a free afternoon
A 09:30 start and a slow twelve kilometres by bicycle through the paddy between Hoi An and the river: flat the whole way, on lanes rather than roads, with a stop at a vegetable village where the beds are still watered by hand from two cans on a shoulder pole.
There is a buffalo, and children are allowed to lead it along the bund and, if they want, to ride it for fifty metres while a farmer holds the rope. Back by 12:00. The afternoon is free: beach, pool, a second tailor fitting, or nothing at all.
Day 10
Hoi An to Da Nang
A late check-out and a 45-minute drive up the coast at 14:00, with a stop at the Marble Mountains for anyone who wants it — a 156-step climb to a cave with a hole in the roof, and a lift for anyone who does not want the steps.
The Da Nang hotel is on the beach with a pool, and the point of this last night is that it puts you twelve minutes from the airport instead of fifty, so tomorrow morning is not a scramble. The pots from Bat Trang are waiting at reception.
Day 11
Depart Da Nang
Breakfast, a last swim, and the transfer to the airport, which is twelve minutes away. Rooms are held until 12:00 and we can usually arrange a late check-out until 16:00 for an evening flight, charged by the hotel at about USD 35.
What it costs
| Party | Per adult | Per child |
|---|---|---|
| 2 adults, private | USD 2,890 | — |
| 2 adults and 2 children | USD 2,290 | USD 1,374 |
| Child aged 5 to 11, any party size | — | 60% of the adult price |
| Child under 5 | — | No charge for ground services |
Included and not
What the price includes
- Ten nights as described, including one night aboard in a family cabin in Lan Ha Bay
- Interconnecting rooms at the four hotels that have them, requested and confirmed before you travel
- Private vehicle and driver throughout, with child seats and booster seats at no charge
- English-speaking guide on days 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9
- The Haiphong to Da Nang flight, quoted at cost for adults and children
- Trang An rowing boat, bicycles and helmets, kayaks, the pottery workshop and the cooking class
- Water puppet tickets, entrance fees and the Hoi An old town pass
- Breakfast daily and the meals marked in the day plan
What it does not include
- International flights
- Vietnam visa or e-visa fees, which children need as well as adults
- Travel insurance, which is a condition of travel
- Meals not marked, drinks and laundry
- The Marble Mountains lift, tailoring, and tips
Pictures from the route
When this trip is the wrong one
- Your children are under five. The Trang An boat is two hours sitting still, the kayaks are not suitable, and the cooking class will be an hour of somebody holding a toddler.
- You want Sapa, Ha Giang or the Mekong Delta as well. Each of them adds two travel days at the wrong end of a family trip, and we would rather decline than sell an eleven-day version with them wedged in.
- You are travelling in October or November and cannot move. Hoi An floods most years in exactly that window, and four nights there is the heart of this route.
- You need a connecting door between rooms every single night. The boat cabin has two bedrooms sharing a bathroom rather than a door, and no boat in Lan Ha is built otherwise.
- Your teenagers are fifteen or older and want a harder trip. This route is deliberately slow, and they will find the free afternoons long.
Two questions families ask before the itinerary
The first is whether the boat night is worth it with children. For ages six and up, it is the part they talk about afterwards, and one night is the right length: two nights aboard and the novelty is gone by lunchtime on day two. Read the Lan Ha Bay page for what the bay is actually like and how it differs from the name on the postcards.
The second is the month. March, April and May are the best compromise across both halves of this route, June is hot but the sea is warmest, and we would steer any family away from late September to mid-November for the central section. The full grid is on the when to go page, and the Hoi An page has the flood marks painted on the shophouse walls in a photograph, which makes the point better than a sentence does.
Common questions
Questions travellers ask most
What ages does this actually work for?
Six to fourteen is the band it was built for. Six is the point at which a child can manage the Trang An boat and a full day of moving about in heat; fourteen is roughly where free afternoons start to feel like a waste of a holiday.
Outside that band we will still quote it, but we will tell you which days we would change. With a four-year-old we shorten day four and drop the cycling; with a sixteen-year-old we usually swap a Hoi An day for a day on a motorbike pillion through the Hai Van pass with a driver.
Are interconnecting rooms guaranteed?
Confirmed at the four land hotels, in writing, before you pay the balance. If a hotel cannot hold them we change hotel rather than tell you at check-in. The boat is the exception: a family cabin there means two bedrooms off one lobby with a shared bathroom, and no vessel in Lan Ha has a connecting door in the sense you mean.
How do you handle food with a fussy eater?
We send a note to every hotel and the boat before arrival, and plain steamed rice, noodles without sauce, chicken, bread and fruit are available at every meal on the trip. The cooking class adapts too. What we will not do is arrange a separate Western menu at every stop, because it turns a two-hour lunch into a negotiation and the children usually eat what the family next to them is eating anyway.
Is it safe to cycle with children on these routes?
The Ninh Binh dyke paths and the Hoi An paddy lanes carry farm traffic and scooters at walking pace, not cars. Helmets are provided and worn. We ride with a guide in front and the driver behind in the vehicle, and we do not cycle in the old town of Hoi An during the evening. If a child cannot ride independently, a tandem trailer bike is available at both stops and we need to know two weeks ahead.
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