Vietnam travel guide: where to base yourself

The short answer

Pick one base for each part of Vietnam you want to see, then check whether each site is really in that base. Often it is not. Mỹ Sơn is linked to Hội An on XTOUR as its base, but its management board gives its address as Mỹ Sơn hamlet, Thu Bồn commune, Đà Nẵng city.[23] Ha Long Bay is a sea area, and its management board places it in Quảng Ninh province, not in Hanoi.[18] The Tràng An sites' board sits in Hoa Lư ward, Ninh Bình province, a different province from Hanoi.[20]

XTOUR's Vietnamese destinations are cities and towns you can sleep in: Hanoi in the north, Huế, Hội An and Da Nang in the centre, and Ho Chi Minh City in the south, with Hạ Long, Phong Nha, Sa Pa, Nha Trang, Đà Lạt and Cần Thơ as further bases. Ninh Bình appears here as a plain name: XTOUR has not yet settled which Ninh Bình it means as a destination. XTOUR has no routing provider, so this guide gives no travel time between any two places, including the road and airport times printed on official tourism pages.

How the official regions and the 2025 mergers fit together

The Viet Nam National Authority of Tourism groups the country into six regions on its website: the Northern Midlands & Mountains, the Red River Delta, the North Central Coast, the South Central Coast & Central Highlands, Southeastern Vietnam and the Mekong Delta.[1] These are the tourism board's marketing regions, not administrative units, and XTOUR uses them only as plain names.

The administrative map changed in 2025. The National Assembly's Resolution 202/2025/QH15, signed on 12 June 2025, reduced the country to 34 province-level units, 28 provinces and 6 cities, with the new local governments to operate from 1 July 2025; Hanoi and Huế were among the 11 units left unchanged.[14] The tourism board's map already lists 34 names under its six regions.[1] Many other official pages have not caught up, and the sections below quote each one as written. The guide to the 2025 province mergers and place names explains the change itself.

The table restates the cited prose below. A base is where XTOUR suggests sleeping; it never means the site is inside that town.

Hanoi and the north

The tourism board calls Hanoi a capital "founded over 1000 years ago".[3] Its two heritage anchors are run by different Hanoi city bodies:

• The Imperial Citadel of Thang Long is managed by the Thang Long – Hanoi Heritage Conservation Centre, set up by a Hanoi People's Committee decision of 1 September 2006, at 19C Hoàng Diệu in Ba Đình ward. The centre describes the citadel as a complex built by successive dynasties and tied to the history of the capital, and links an online-booking page from its homepage.[16] See the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long guide, and, for the older citadel that has its own section on the same centre's site, Cổ Loa.
• The Temple of Literature (Văn Miếu – Quốc Tử Giám) is run by its own centre for cultural and scientific activities, established by the Hanoi People's Committee in 2009, which calls it a special national relic and gives its entrance as 58 Quốc Tử Giám street.[17] See the Temple of Literature guide.

Two places people visit from Hanoi are in other provinces. The Ha Long Bay Management Board says the bay lies in Quang Ninh province, covers 1,553 km² and holds 1,969 islands.[18] The Tràng An Landscape Complex Management Board, whose site groups the Tràng An area, Tam Cốc – Bích Động, the Hoa Lư ancient capital, Bái Đính pagoda and Thung Nắng, gives its address in Hoa Lư ward, Ninh Bình province.[20] The tourism board's Ninh Bình page mentions "many day tours from the capital", and says Hoa Lư was Vietnam's capital in the 10th and 11th centuries.[6] XTOUR's reading: both lie outside Hanoi, and a day tour from the capital does not put either inside it. Compare the Ninh Bình sites in Tràng An, Tam Cốc, Bái Đính or Hoa Lư.

Hạ Long as its own base. Hạ Long is XTOUR's destination on the shore, and the bay is a sea area beside it; the management board itself gives its address in Hồng Gai ward, Quảng Ninh province.[18] The management board publishes eight numbered itineraries, VHL1 to VHL8, and VHL5 ends at Gia Luận, which the board labels "Cát Bà - Hải Phòng", in a different province.[19] What each route includes, as the board states it, is set out in Ha Long Bay's routes as the management board states them. For what UNESCO inscribed, see Ha Long Bay–Cat Ba archipelago.

Sa Pa is XTOUR's mountain base, in the tourism board's Northern Midlands & Mountains region; the board describes the town at the head of a deep valley of rice terraces, and a cable car journey to the summit of Mount Fansipan, which XTOUR treats as reached from Sa Pa rather than in it.[10] XTOUR has no Sa Pa guide yet.

Huế and Phong Nha

The tourism board says the kings of the Nguyễn dynasty built their capital at Huế, and points visitors to the palaces and theatres of the Huế Citadel and to the tombs of emperors Tự Đức, Minh Mạng and Khải Định.[4] XTOUR's reading: the citadel is in Huế, and the tombs are reached from Huế rather than inside the town.

The name Huế now covers far more than the old capital. The city portal says the City of Huế has 40 commune-level units, 21 wards and 19 communes, under a Standing Committee resolution of 16 June 2025, and an area of 4,947.11 km².[15] XTOUR's reading: an address "in Huế" therefore says little about whether a place is in the town a visitor means. XTOUR does not yet carry a Huế ticket guide and does not describe the ticket system.

Phong Nha is a separate base further north. The tourism board's page describes "the sleepy village of Phong Nha" and the Phong Nha – Kẻ Bàng National Park.[7] The park's management board calls the park the pride of Quảng Trị province.[21] XTOUR's reading: the village is a base for the caves, not the park's container. See Phong Nha – Kẻ Bàng caves and routes as the park lists them.

Hội An or Da Nang

These two are the hardest to separate on paper. The Hội An World Cultural Heritage Conservation Centre gives its own address as Hội An ward, Đà Nẵng city, with a danang.gov.vn email address.[22] Đà Nẵng's tourism portal describes the "new" city as 11,859.59 km² with 3,065,628 people, bordering Huế to the north.[24] XTOUR keeps them as two destinations: Hội An, the old trading town, and Da Nang, the coastal city the tourism board pairs with My Khe Beach, the Marble Mountains and the Hải Vân Pass road "between Da Nang and Hue".[8] The tourism board's South Central Coast & Central Highlands region page lists Da Nang, Nha Trang, Da Lat, Dak Lak and Lam Dong as its destinations, with no Hội An entry;[2] its Places to go page names "ancient Hoi An" in the region's one-line description.[1] Which of the two to sleep in is the subject of Hội An or Da Nang as a base.

Two sites covered by XTOUR's Hội An guides lie outside the town:

• Mỹ Sơn. Its management board gives the address as Mỹ Sơn hamlet, Thu Bồn commune, Đà Nẵng city, and describes more than 70 Champa temple-tower structures built between the 4th and 13th centuries.[23] See visiting Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary and Champa and the Cham towers.
• Cù Lao Chàm. The Hội An centre's own homepage still describes the islands as in Tân Hiệp commune, "thành phố Hội An, tỉnh Quảng Nam", wording from before the 2025 change, on the same page where the centre gives its address in Đà Nẵng.[22] See Cù Lao Chàm from Hội An.

Inside the town, the Hội An ancient town ticket and Hội An's museums guides quote the centre's own pages. For the town's festivals, see Nguyên Tiêu in Hội An and Bài chòi.

Nha Trang and Đà Lạt sit in the same tourism-board region.[2] The board's Nha Trang page points to beaches, island trips, Long Sơn Pagoda and the Po Nagar Cham towers,[11] and Đà Lạt as a town in the Central Highlands whose focal point is Xuân Hương Lake.[12] XTOUR has no guide to either yet.

Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta

The tourism board describes Ho Chi Minh City, "formerly known as Saigon", as the economic heart of Vietnam and the main hub of the south, and points to the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Central Post Office, Bến Thành Market, the Jade Emperor Pagoda and Chợ Lớn.[9]

The city's own tourism promotion centre shows how unevenly the 2025 change has reached official pages. It gives its office address in Xuan Hoa Ward, a post-reform ward, but places the War Remnants Museum at 28 Võ Văn Tần, "District 3", and the Củ Chi tunnels in "Cu Chi District, Ho Chi Minh City".[25] The page sets Củ Chi apart from the city centre, and gives separate bus directions to the two tunnel sites, Bến Dược and Bến Đình.[26] See Củ Chi tunnels: Bến Dược or Bến Đình. What the History Museum, the War Remnants Museum, the Fine Arts Museum and the Ho Chi Minh City Museum each say they hold is set out in Ho Chi Minh City's museums.

Cần Thơ is XTOUR's Mekong Delta base. The tourism board's Cần Thơ page describes the city on the Hậu River and points to the Cái Răng floating market and the Bình Thủy ancestral house;[13] XTOUR plans the floating market from Cần Thơ rather than describing it as inside the city. The Mekong Delta itself is a region, not a destination.

Across the country

Some questions are not about one base. For the inscribed sites, read Vietnam's World Heritage sites: what XTOUR can source; for living traditions, what UNESCO lists as Vietnam's intangible heritage; for the words on temple gates, chùa, đền, đình, miếu and lăng. Tết is covered in Tết Nguyên Đán as official bodies describe it, and the north's traditions in the Gióng festival and Đạo Mẫu, the worship of the Mother Goddesses.

Each tourism-board destination page prints its own "best time" line. Those lines are the board's marketing copy, not XTOUR advice; Vietnam's seasons, north, central and south sets out what official sources say.

What XTOUR does not know

• Travel times and routes between any two places. Official pages print them (road times from Hanoi, airport distances, the Mỹ Sơn board's distances to Hội An and Đà Nẵng); XTOUR does not repeat them, because a stated distance is not a route.
• XTOUR does not know or state opening hours, prices or booking rules for any site here; each linked guide quotes the operator's page and dates the read.
• The Huế heritage centre's ticket system. XTOUR does not describe it.
• Which administrative wording a page will use. After 2025 the same site may name a place under its old district or province on one page and its new ward or city on another.
• Which base suits whom. XTOUR does not rank bases or regions.