active pace | 14 nights | from $3,240 per person
Vietnam Vacation Package: 14 Nights at a Active Pace
A long country covered properly in two weeks. The days start early, the heat is constant, and the walking is more than the itinerary suggests.
What the days ask of you
This trip is filed as active. Everything below is measured, not adjectives.
- Walking on an average day
- five to seven miles on a full day, most of it on pavement in heat
- Longest stretch without a seat
- three hours through the caves and the terraces, with no shade for the last hour
- What is under your feet
- paving, mud after rain, and about four hundred steps at the two big sites
- Climbing
- the steps are the climb. There is no lift anywhere on this route
- Altitude
- sea level to about five thousand feet in the north
- Heat
- constant and humid. This is what makes the trip active rather than steady
- Times you move
- nine, including three flights and an overnight train
- Who this is not for
- if you do not do well in humidity, no itinerary change fixes it
What is included
- Fourteen nights in hotels and one night on a boat, all with air conditioning
- Breakfast daily, six lunches and three dinners
- Three internal flights and one overnight train in a soft sleeper, four berths
- A guide for the whole route, plus local guides in three places
- All admissions listed in your documents, including the boat and the caves
- Transfers at every airport and station on the route
What is not included
- International flights, quoted separately
- Meals not listed above, which is most of your dinners and deliberately so
- Any visa or entry document, which is yours to arrange and which we do not advise on
- Gratuities for the guide and drivers
- Laundry
- The cycling afternoon, which is optional and which has a supplement
What it costs
from $3,240 per person, on two people sharing.
That is the lowest figure we have actually placed this trip at in the last season. It moves with the month, the room or cabin grade, whether you travel alone and how far ahead you book. Flights are not in it unless this page says they are. The figure is confirmed in writing, with the operator named, before you commit to anything.
When this is worth doing, and when it is not
The country is long enough that no month is good everywhere. March, April and October are the best compromise across the whole route. June to August the middle of the country is very hot and the south is wet in the afternoons. December and January the north can be gray and cold in a way that surprises people.
Fourteen nights with three internal flights is a fast trip and it is meant to be. If you want to sit still anywhere for more than two nights, this is not it.
What gets settled when you confirm
The overnight train berth, upper or lower, which matters more than the price difference suggests. Whether you want the two extra nights at the coast that most people add after seeing the pace written down. Room type on the boat night, which is small in every category. And your group departure, since these run on fixed dates and the published figure is the lowest of them.