After clearing immigration and customs, you will be met at Hanoi's Noi Bai airport and taken to the hotel where you will stay for 3 nights. There will be an orientation meeting before the welcome dinner where you will enjoy your first taste of the complex, yet subtle, Vietnamese cooking – a cuisine full of unexpected delights.
Today begins with a visit to Hoan Kiem Lake, the heartbeat of Hanoi, followed by a cyclo tour around the maze-like warren of streets that make up the Old Quarter. After lunch at the famed Metropole Hotel’s Spices Garden, where diners graze among "street food stalls," visit the Ho Chi Minh Stilt House, the One Pillar Pagoda and the Ho Chi Minh Museum.
After breakfast, tour the state-of-the-art Museum of Ethnic Minorities which will provide some background on the hill tribes who live in and around Sapa. Lunch today is at KOTO, a restaurant dedicated to teaching hospitality skills to street kids. Afterwards, tour the Confucian Temple of Literature, Vietnam’s first university, the Fine Arts Museum and enjoy the pre-dinner performance of the acclaimed Thanh Long Water Puppets.
Drive northeast through the Red River Delta with its rice-paddy embroidered countryside to Halong Bay, one of the world’s most bewitching places. Board our private luxury junk for an overnight excursion among the limestone islets that jut dramatically from the emerald waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. With a little imagination, these limestone outcrops can morph into fighting cocks, dragons and even General Charles de Gaulle’s nose. Gorge on fresh seafood, check out remarkable caves, sail past floating villages before anchoring in a quiet bay for the night. Weather permitting, you can swim off the boat.
Early birds can greet the dawn, exercising or sipping coffee or tea on the upper deck. The junk sets sail again during breakfast and cruises to the Bai Tho Mountain in beautiful Bai Tu Long Bay before returning to the Halong wharf. Arrive back in Hanoi in time for a leisurely dinner at a popular working class restaurant. Afterwards, board a luxury train to Lao Cai, the jumping off point into the northwestern mountains.
The train arrives early in Lao Cai, one of Vietnam's gateways to China. Travel by private bus along a highway that threads through terraced mountainsides and verdant valleys, past Mount Fansipan, Vietnam's highest peak, before coming to the former French hill town of Sapa where you’ll stay for 1 night. The day is free to explore the town and its bustling market and/or to visit nearby hill tribe villages.
An early start to drive to the Bac Ha Sunday market, the largest and most colourful regional market where several minority tribes gather to buy and sell products not available in other places. After visiting a Tay minority village, drive back to Lao Cai for supper at a local restaurant before catching the overnight train back to Hanoi.
The train arrives in Hanoi very early. After a light breakfast, drive to the airport for the morning flight to Danang. On arrival, drive to the charming port town of Hoi An where you'll stay for 3 nights. Hoi An is a town crammed with good restaurants, art galleries and tailors where custom made clothes can be sewn in just a few hours. There will be plenty of time to check out the shops – or just to laze around the hotel pool. Good restaurants also abound. Dine tonight at one of the riverside restaurants where you can indulge in local delicacies such cao lau, a type of noodle made only in Hoi An, white rose and fish in banana leaf.
This morning, take a short walking tour of the city. Hoi An, which miraculously escaped any significant damage during the Vietnam War. Today, it's an architectural treasure trove of lovingly maintained Chinese, Japanese and French merchant homes and places of worship. Its compact Old Quarter is off-limits to cars and easy to navigate. In the afternoon, tour the sprawling food market then take a boat along the Thu Bon River to the Red Bridge Restaurant for a hands-on cooking class where you'll prepare your dinner.
Today, enjoy an eco-tour along a water coconut channel. Learn how to paddle a coracle, one of the round woven boats, how to catch fish the way the locals do and about the role the channel played during the Vietnam War. The afternoon is free to continue exploring Hoi An or picking up your new wardrobe.
After an early breakfast, drive to Hue, the former Imperial Capital of Vietnam. En route, visit the Cham museum in Danang, then climb up the serpentine coastal highway to the beautiful Hai Van (Heavenly Clouds) Pass. Descending, drive past oyster farms and rural villages. Arriving in Hue, check into the hotel for 2 nights, then tour the Imperial Citadel, modeled on Bejing’s Forbidden City and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Tonight, enjoy a dinner of "royal" dishes at the Y Thao Garden House, set in a restored French-era house.
This morning, take a dragon boat cruise along the Perfume River to observe the bustling everyday river life, stopping at the exquisite Thien Mu Pagoda, a working Buddhist monastery and school. Later, tour the mausoleums of Emperors Tu Duc, a picky eater who insisted each meal have 50 dishes, and Khai Dinh, a man who couldn’t abide an empty wall.
After breakfast, fly to Hanoi. Check into the hotel for 1 night. The remainder of the day is free to pick up any last minute souvenirs before the farewell banquet at Wild Lotus, Hanoi’s superb fusion restaurant that, in our opinion, serves the best food in the capital.
After breakfast, transfer to the Noi Bai airport for your flight home.
THE TORONTO STAR Saturday, January 5, 2002 (PDF)
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, Saturday, January 12, 2002 (PDF)
