Southern Vietnam and the beaches, nine days

Day 1

Into Ho Chi Minh City

The first hour on foot, when the traffic stops being alarming

Tan Son Nhat is inside the city, so the transfer is 30 to 50 minutes depending entirely on the hour. Nothing is scheduled. District 1 in the first evening, on foot, with an early dinner is enough of a start.

Day 2

The city, and Cholon

Thien Hau temple, under the coils of incense

The War Remnants Museum in the morning. It is one-sided and it is the most honest two hours available here, and people come out of it quiet. Then the Reunification Palace, its 1960s interiors untouched. The afternoon goes west to Cholon — Binh Tay market, Thien Hau temple, the herbalists and the gold streets — which is the part of the city that predates everything around it.

Day 3

South to the river

The canals at four o’clock, with the light low over the water

Three and a half to four hours to Can Tho, stopping at a Cao Dai temple and crossing the two great bridges that ended the ferry queues. The afternoon is small canals by sampan out towards Phong Dien, and the evening is the Ninh Kieu quay, which is where the whole city walks after dark.

Day 4

Cai Rang at first light, and the rest of the delta

The pole above each boat, which is the whole market explained

On the water by half past five in a small boat rather than a tour barge. Cai Rang is a wholesale market between boats, each advertising its cargo on a pole above the deck, and it is doing real work rather than selling coffee to visitors. Two hours. Then a rice-noodle workshop, an orchard, and back for a late breakfast. The afternoon is free, and most people sleep through part of it.

Day 5

Back up the highway, and out to the island

The first evening on the west coast, which faces the sunset

This is the plainest day of the nine and we will not dress it up: three and a half to four hours back to Ho Chi Minh City, a wait at the airport, and an hour in the air to Phu Quoc. You land in the early evening. We keep the connection wide rather than tight, because the delta highway is the one road in the south that can lose you an hour without warning.

Day 6

The southern archipelago by boat

The second snorkelling stop, when people stop checking the time

Out of An Thoi at the southern tip to the small islands below it — three or four snorkelling stops in water that is genuinely clear from November to April, lunch aboard, and back by mid-afternoon. This is the best day on Phu Quoc and it is not on Phu Quoc. In the wet months the sea is too rough for it and we say so before you book rather than on the morning.

Day 7

The interior, and what it smells like

The fish sauce vats, which nobody forgets

Half a day inland with a car: a fish sauce house, where the anchovy vats are the size of a room and the smell is the most memorable thing you will meet in Vietnam, then a pepper smallholding and the dirt roads through the northern national park. Back to the coast by lunch. The afternoon is yours.

Day 8

Nothing arranged

An afternoon in which nothing is scheduled

A day with no guide, no car and no plan. Ong Lang and Cua Can are quiet enough to swim off, Long Beach has somewhere to walk to in the evening, and the night market in Duong Dong is busy, touristic and still the best seafood on the island. If you would rather have a second boat day or a cooking class, tell the coordinator the evening before.

Day 9

Home from Phu Quoc

The airport is 20 to 30 minutes from the west coast. There are direct flights to Hanoi and a handful of regional cities, and connections home through Ho Chi Minh City. If yours is late we hold the room into the afternoon.