Day trips from Hue, and which direction is worth the day

Hue sits between two things worth leaving it for. North is the old dividing line and the war sites along it. South is the Hai Van pass and the coast, which is also the road out.

North and south are the honest shape of day trips from Hue. One is a subject, one is a journey, and the third is a mountain with its own weather.

Which direction should you take?

South, unless the war is the reason you came. The pass towards Da Nang is the best road in central Vietnam, and it doubles as the transfer. It costs no extra day at all.

The Hue hub covers the city itself, and the two-day route is where the tombs sit before any of this is worth considering.

What is the DMZ trip actually like?

Long, flat and dependent on the guiding. The sites around the seventeenth parallel — Vinh Moc, the Ben Hai river, Khe Sanh, the Rockpile — spread over 100 km of unremarkable country. What makes them worth the drive is somebody explaining them.

Vinh Moc is the one that stays with people. A village dug itself 20-odd metres underground and lived there for years, and the tunnels are open to walk through. The war sites guide sets it against Cu Chi, and the short version is that the two tunnel systems tell opposite stories.

Take a tour rather than a car. This is the one trip out of Hue where the commentary is the product.

Is Bach Ma worth a day?

If you want a forest rather than a monument, yes. Bach Ma rises to about 1,450 m some 40 km south of the city. A road runs most of the way to the summit, where a French hill station stands in ruins among the trees.

Bach Ma has its own weather, which is both the point and the risk. Cloud sits on the summit when Hue is dry. The Rhododendron and Five Lakes trails run wet most of the year, and the park closes sections after storms.

Go with a car and a driver who will wait, or hire the park transport at the gate. Public transport does not serve it.

What about Lang Co and the pass?

Take them on the way out. Lang Co is a lagoon and a long beach at the foot of the Hai Van pass, about 65 km south. The road climbs from there over the shoulder of the mountains, with the coast opening behind you.

Almost every transfer between Hue and Da Nang passes both. A driver will stop at the top of the pass for as long as you like, which is the difference between a transfer and a day out. The central route builds the journey in rather than treating it as travel time.

The train covers the same coast and cannot stop, which the train guide argues is still the better version for some travellers.

Can you combine two of them?

The DMZ with anything, no. It fills a day on its own and returns after dark.

Bach Ma and the pass do combine, in one direction. The park entrance sits roughly on the road south, so a car can climb Bach Ma in the morning, drop back to the highway and cross the Hai Van into Da Nang in the afternoon. That is a long day and it moves you and your luggage at the same time, which is the argument for it.

The other pairing worth knowing is Thuan An beach with the tombs. The beach sits about 15 km east of the city on the lagoon side, it is where Hue swims rather than where visitors go, and an hour there after a morning of tombs costs nothing.

What should you do with a second day instead?

The tombs, before any of these. They sit a few kilometres out along the Perfume River, they are quieter than the citadel, and the things to do page ranks which of them repay the time.

A day trip out of Hue is a third-day decision. Anyone here for two nights should spend both of them inside the province rather than on a road, and Ho Thuy Tien, the abandoned water park 8 km out, pairs with a tomb morning for anyone who wants something that is not imperial.