Vietnam is definitely known as the place to go travelling for backpackers. But, what if you still want to have the same experiences as travellers but you aren’t spending a year travelling the world and you only have a two-week break from work to try and get a similar experience. When you are planning your two week trip to Vietnam you probably don’t want to just stay in one place as there is an awful lot to see and why spend the entire time in the city you land in.

So in less than a week my partner and I will be jetting off for our two-week adventure I have planned in Vietnam. Make sure to follow me on my social accounts if you want to keep up to date with our adventure while we are there.  There will be a follow-up post all about the activities and things we got up to once we return.

So you are probably wanting to know the areas we have picked to stop off at on our trip.  With only having two weeks to spare I had to narrow down the main locations we wanted to visit that would be convenient to get to the next stop. We will be starting in the south and working our way up north, then return back to the south to get our returning flight.

Here is a list of where we will be visiting:

• Day 1 fly out from Manchester to Ho Chi Minh City
• Day 2 arrive in Ho Chi Minh City – 2 nights
• Day 4 fly to Da Nang – 1 night
• Day 5 go to Hoi An – 4 nights
• Day 9 fly to Hanoi – 2 nights
• Day 11 Cruise tour around Ha Long Bay – 2-night cruise
• Day 13 travel back to Hanoi – 1 night
• Day 14 fly back to Ho Chi Minh City – 1 night
• Day 15 fly back to Manchester

We started off by booking our flights using Sky Scanner, we are flying from Manchester to Ho Chi Minh City which works out about £470pp for our return flights. We are travelling in May, this is the end of the rainy season and the weather will hopefully be good. We are flying with Qatar and have a stop at Doha. Our flights are around 18hours.

Our first destination is Ho Chi Minh City where we will be spending our first two nights, this should give us enough time to investigate the area and we will be returning here at the end of our trip. There is an abundance of hotels to pick from and you can find one for whatever suits your budget. You can do super cheap and stay at a hostel, or pay a bit more for a hotel, or go all out and go for a fancy top hotel. This is what makes it so great, you can find something to suit your personal needs.  We have gone for hotels on this trip as we wanted affordable but with a bit of luxury.

Our first hotel is going to be the Brilliant Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. This hotel starts from around £17 per night, we have booked all our hotels through Hotels.com. They always seem to have good prices and even discount available.

After our two nights in Ho Chi Minh City, we will be getting a flight to Da Nang. We are flying with VietJet Air and the flight costs around £33pp, but bear in mind we missed out on the cheapest tickets as we didn’t book months in advance. So you can get the internal flights cheaper as long as you know your plans a few months ahead.

Da Nang is another city but it is located in Central Vietnam and by the coast. We will be staying here for one night only before getting a taxi to Hoi An. We will be staying at the Avora Hotel, which is located along Han River and has some pretty spectacular views. This hotel costs around £24 per night.

After our night in Da Nang, we will then get a taxi to Hoi An which is also on the coast but is quieter than the other cities, so it will be a nice change of pace. The taxi to Hoi An should take around 45 minutes to get there.  Hoi An has a well preserved Ancient Town that is cut through with canals. We will also be using some of the time here to go and visit the beaches.

With Hoi An being a lot quieter it is safe to use bicycles to get around the place, this will be handy when we want to visit the beach. We will definitely be making the most of this as our hotel offers free bike hire. We will be stopping off here for four nights and we are staying at the Atlas Hoi An Hotel. This hotel is around £30 per night and has a nice swimming pool to take a dip in when we need to cool down after a busy day sightseeing. There is also a balcony, which is one of the reasons we chose this hotel. You can book cheaper hotels than the ones we have gone for.

After having four nights to relax in Hoi An we will be going back to Da Nang to get a flight to Hanoi. We have booked all our internal flight with VietJet Air. This flight works out at around £55pp, as again we missed the cheapest ones and then we also added some extra luggage allowance just in case we need it.

Hanoi is another large city but it is located in the North. We will be spending two nights here at the Lotus Boutique Hotel, which is located in the Old Quarter. This hotel is around £18 per night, we upgraded rooms so we could get one with a balcony. We enjoy sitting out on the balcony in the evenings and also enjoying a cup of coffee in the mornings. The street food can vary from city to city and have different flavours, so that is one thing that we are looking forward to trying. You can pick up food from the street for about 50p! It would be rude not to try everything on offer!

After our two night in Hanoi we will then be picked up to go on a two-night cruise in Ha Long Bay. This is something I am really looking forward to. We will be staying on a Junk Boat for two nights and all food is included and also the activities. These include things such as canoeing, spring roll making, visiting maze cave and visiting a fishing village.

There are so many boats to pick from it took us a while to decide. In the end, we went with Gray Line Cruise as we both liked the look of the boat and we also get our own little balcony, which will be lovely in the evening to sit out on. This part of the holiday was a little bit more pricey, but as it includes all food and the activities we didn’t mind paying it. This cruise was around £340 for the two of us for two nights. You can pick one night cruises and they are obviously cheaper, but as we are travelling all this way we thought we would make the most of it.

After our cruise, we will get dropped back off at the Lotus Boutique Hotel in Hanoi for one more night. We will probably get back to the hotel for around 4/5pm ish, this will give us the evening to do any last minute things we didn’t get to do previously. In the morning we will then get another flight back to Ho Chi Minh City. Again we are travelling by VietJet Air and it has cost around £50pp, again with the extra luggage allowance.

Back at Ho Chi Minh City, we will then be staying at the Palace Hotel Saigon. We made sure our last hotel has a swimming pool so we can have one last dip in the pool. We upgraded our room to a Palace Suite with balcony. We chose that room as it is our last night and we thought we would pick on of the nice rooms. Rooms here start from around £40ish per night depending on which website you book with. For this hotel, we booked with Agoda.com as it was the cheapest.

This will be our last chance to pick up anything we are wanting to buy and to try any of the food we haven’t yet had the experience of yet. After our final night, we will then be flying back to Manchester in the evening and arrive home the following day, probably very tired and exhausted after our two week trip to Vietnam!

Let me know what you think of our two week trip to Vietnam travel plans and if you have any suggestions of what we should do while we are there, please leave a comment below.

Also, let me know if you have been or if you are thinking of travelling to Vietnam.

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