One week in northern Vietnam, and the choice it forces

A week in northern Vietnam is six nights, and the region offers two things that each want most of them. The mountains along the Chinese border are one. The limestone and water south and east of Hanoi are the other.

Trying for both is the mistake, and it is the one nearly every published one-week itinerary makes.

What actually fits into a week?

Hanoi, plus one large thing. The north's distances are short on a map and long on the road, because the roads climb. Everything below is measured from Hanoi, which is where a week starts and ends.

Read the right-hand column and the week writes itself. Ha Giang takes four nights and most of two travel days, which leaves two nights for Hanoi and nothing else. Everything else fits together.

Which week should you pick?

The mountain week if the mountains are the reason you are going; the water week otherwise. Both are good. They are not comparable, and pretending to choose on quality is how people end up doing neither properly.

What does the mountain week look like?

Two nights in Hanoi, then four on the Ha Giang loop. The loop is the reason people come north. Three days is the minimum anyone rides it in; four is what most take, and what makes the loop worth the road to reach it.

Days one and two are Hanoi. Day three is the bus to Ha Giang, six to seven hours. The loop starts that afternoon or the next morning.

Days four to six are the loop itself: mountain passes, valley villages, and the road in the photograph at the top of this page. Ride it yourself only with real experience — most visitors book an easy rider, which means a local driver and you on the back.

Day seven returns to Hanoi. That is the whole week, and nothing else fits into it.

What does the water week look like?

Hanoi, Ninh Binh, then the bay, with no journey longer than five hours. The same six nights, spread across three places rather than concentrated in one.

Days one and two are Hanoi — the things worth doing there fill both without hurrying.

Days three and four are Ninh Binh, an hour and a half south. Limestone the same shape as Ha Long's, standing in rice fields rather than water, seen from a rowing boat and a bicycle. Two nights is right; the day trip everyone sells is the compressed version.

Days five and six are the bay. An overnight cruise if you want the water at dawn, or Cat Ba island if you would rather sleep on land. Cat Ba is three and a half to five hours from Hanoi by bus, ferry and cable car.

Day seven goes back to Hanoi for the flight. Total road time is around eight hours across the week, which is what makes this the version to give a first trip.

What does each cost in travel hours?

Sapa costs an overnight train each way to Lao Cai, about 8 hours, plus the hour up to the town. Ha Long costs roughly 3 hours by road each way, or the same again to Haiphong for the Cat Ba ferry.

Sapa costs 2 nights of a 7-night week in movement alone, against most of a single day for Ha Long. The mountains cost more and repay more, which is the whole decision.

Why can you not do both?

Because Ha Giang is not a stop, it is a trip. Four nights on the loop plus twelve to fourteen hours of road leaves two nights, and two nights cannot hold Hanoi, Ninh Binh and the bay.

A northern Vietnam itinerary that promises all four is counting travel days as sightseeing days. A day that starts with a six-hour bus is not a day in the mountains. It is a day on a bus that ends there.

The same arithmetic drives our ten-day route through the whole country, which cuts Ha Giang for exactly this reason. A week in the north is the trip where you can have it instead.

What does the northern week cost?

Around 1,650,000 dong a day for a comfortable middle, about 65 US dollars, on the figures in the cost guide — 7 nights of that is roughly 455 dollars before flights.

The two lines that move it are the overnight train to Lao Cai and the Ha Long cruise, which is priced per night on the water rather than as an entry fee.

When is the north at its best?

October to April is the dry half of the northern year. The mountains add a condition on top. December and January are genuinely cold up there, and the mist that comes with the cold removes the view.

For the mountain week, aim at the shoulder months either side of winter rather than the middle of it. For the water week the whole dry half works, and our region-by-region calendar covers how the north's year differs from the rest of the country.

One caution on the loop specifically. Mountain roads close after heavy rain, and a week with no slack in it has nowhere to put a closed pass. Keep the last night flexible.

If you have not settled on the north yet, one week in Vietnam sets this route against the central alternative and against the two-region week that does not work.

With three more days, ten days in northern Vietnam stops forcing the choice this week makes: the Ha Giang loop fits without anything being dropped for it.