Vietnam, the way we love it.

The Golden Bridge is a 150-metre footbridge that curves out from the mountainside in the Bà Nà Hills, seemingly held up by two huge weathered hands. It opened in 2018 and sits close to 1,500 metres above sea level, so the air is noticeably cooler than on the coast and clouds often drift across the walkway.

Bà Nà began as a French hill station in 1919; today a cable car of almost 5.8 kilometres carries visitors over forested slopes to the summit area. The Golden Bridge is at its quietest in the first hours of the day, before most visitors have come up, and the morning light falls softly on the two stone-coloured hands.

The Marble Mountains are five rocky hills south of Đà Nẵng, each named after one of the five elements. Inside Thủy Sơn, the Âm Phủ cave shows a Buddhist hell with demons and a scale for weighing deeds, before a steep stair climbs towards daylight. North of the city, Sơn Trà, known as Monkey Mountain, shelters rare red-shanked douc langurs.

On Thủy Sơn, the only one of the Marble Mountains open to visitors, stone steps lead past pagodas and cave shrines to viewpoints over the coast. On the Sơn Trà peninsula, the white Lady Buddha of Linh Ứng pagoda stands 67 metres tall and faces the sea; in clear weather the statue can be made out from Mỹ Khê beach.

Đà Nẵng stretches between the Han River and the sea, with bridges, a riverside promenade and wide beaches a short distance apart. Han Market sits on Trần Phú street near the river: food, coffee and candied fruit downstairs, fabrics and clothing upstairs. The Museum of Cham Sculpture, founded in 1915, holds sandstone figures from the old Champa kingdom.

The Dragon Bridge crosses the Han River as a 666-metre steel dragon, with six lanes of traffic running alongside its arched body. Opened in 2013, it is lit up after dark, and on weekend evenings the dragon’s head breathes fire and then water. People gather on the bridge and along both banks to watch. Right next to it is the Love Bridge with its red heart lanterns on the bank of the Han River. We take you to both for €10 per person.

After dark the Han River becomes the city’s showpiece: from the water, four illuminated bridges come into view, among them the swing bridge from the late 1990s and the 666-metre Dragon Bridge. Seen from a boat, lit promenades and the skyline line both banks, and on weekend evenings the dragon’s head sends out fire and water.

The railway between Đà Nẵng and Huế hugs the coast around the Hải Vân headland, slipping through a series of tunnels with forested mountains on one side and the sea on the other. Since March 2024 a dedicated tourist train has covered this stretch in about three hours, with a community carriage where Huế folk songs are performed.

The Hải Vân Pass winds for about 21 kilometres over a mountain spur between Đà Nẵng and Huế, reaching 496 metres. Its name means ocean cloud pass, after the mist that rises from the sea. Since a road tunnel opened in 2005, most through traffic runs under the mountain, leaving the old hairpin road largely to riders and sightseers.

Huế was the seat of the Nguyễn emperors; its Imperial City, begun under Gia Long in 1804, lies behind a moat and a wall about 2.5 kilometres round. Visitors enter through the Ngọ Môn gate of 1833 and reach throne halls and the partly rebuilt Purple Forbidden City. The road from Đà Nẵng crosses the 496-metre Hải Vân Pass.

Huế’s citadel faces the Perfume River, its outer ramparts running nearly ten kilometres around the old town; within them stands the walled Imperial City, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1993. Much was destroyed in the fighting of 1968 and restoration continues. The rail line from Đà Nẵng follows the coast around Hải Vân, the sea beside the track.

Đà Nẵng’s cooking is central Vietnamese: mì Quảng, wide turmeric-yellow noodles with just a little concentrated broth, peanuts and a toasted rice cracker, or bún chả cá, vermicelli soup with fried fish cake. Much of it is served at small street-side kitchens that specialise in a single dish, scattered through neighbourhoods well away from the beach hotels.

Around Han Market and Cồn Market, food is everywhere: bánh xèo, crisp yellow pancakes with shrimp, pork and bean sprouts, are cut up and rolled in rice paper with herbs, and nem lụi, minced pork grilled on lemongrass stalks, is eaten the same way. Stalls open and close with the time of day, so morning and evening taste different.

Đà Nẵng changes after sunset: the bridges over the Han River are lit up, families sit out along the promenade, and charcoal grills start up at street kitchens. Evening is the time for bánh xèo and nem lụi, and for bánh tráng cuốn thịt heo, boiled pork rolled in rice paper with herbs and dipped in pungent mắm nêm.

Central Vietnamese cooking starts at the market: bundles of fresh herbs, rice paper, turmeric, fish from the coast and the fermented sauces that give the dishes their depth. Local classics such as mì Quảng or bánh xèo need few techniques but a careful balance of sour, salty, sweet and hot, so they are best learned by hand.

Three very different sides of Đà Nẵng: the Golden Bridge in the cool Bà Nà Hills, reached by a cable car almost 5.8 kilometres long; the Marble Mountains, five rocky hills with cave shrines and pagodas near the coast; and the Dragon Bridge, a 666-metre steel dragon across the Han River in the middle of the city.

Đà Nẵng is a modern port city of bridges and beaches; Hội An, to the south, is its opposite. Its old town was a trading port from the 15th to the 19th century and has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1999. More than 1,100 timber-frame buildings survive along its narrow streets, among them the covered Japanese Bridge.

Cruise ships call at two ports here. Tiên Sa lies on the Sơn Trà peninsula, about 10 kilometres from central Đà Nẵng, with the Marble Mountains and Hội An further south. Chân Mây is a deep-water port roughly 45 kilometres north of Đà Nẵng and about 65 kilometres from Huế, close to Lăng Cô and the Hải Vân Pass.

Mỹ Khê is Đà Nẵng’s city beach: a broad strip of pale sand shelving gently into the sea, minutes from the centre. Locals come to swim and exercise at dawn and return in late afternoon. To the north the Sơn Trà peninsula closes the bay, with the 67-metre Lady Buddha on its slope. American soldiers knew it as China Beach.

SHB Đà Nẵng play in V.League 1, Vietnam’s top football division, in the 2026/27 season. Their home is Chi Lăng Stadium, a 20,000-seat ground called Hòa Xuân Stadium until late 2025, when the city revived the name of the club’s former stadium in the centre. Crowds are mostly local, so a match shows everyday football in central Vietnam.

After dark the Hoài River, which runs along the edge of Hội An's old town, fills with small wooden sampans rowed by hand and hung with lanterns. From the water you see the lit riverfront houses. Lotus-shaped paper lanterns with a candle are set afloat here, a local custom for remembering ancestors and wishing for health and good fortune.

Bảy Mẫu coconut forest lies in Cẩm Thanh, about 3 km from Hội An's old town, near the mouth of the Thu Bồn River. Round bamboo basket boats are paddled through narrow channels lined with nipa palms, and rowers like to spin them on the spot. The name recalls the grove's original size: seven mẫu, an old land measure.

The Hội An Memories Show is staged in the open air at Hội An Memories Land, a cultural park on a river islet just south of the old town. Around 500 performers move across a stage of roughly 25,000 m², telling without spoken dialogue how a farming village grew into a trading port. The show premiered in 2018.

Hội An's old town was a trading port from the 15th to the 19th century, and UNESCO counts 1,107 timber-frame buildings in its 30 hectares. Away from the main streets you find narrow alleys, family chapels and old wells. The local noodle dish cao lầu belongs here too: legend says its water must come from the ancient Bá Lễ well.

Mỹ Sơn sits in a basin ringed by mountains, where the kings of Champa built Hindu temples between the 4th and 13th centuries. Early on the valley is cooler and quieter, and low light picks out the carvings in the red brick. The Thu Bồn River rises here and reaches the sea near Hội An, once linking sanctuary and coast.

About 36 km from Hội An, Mỹ Sơn was the main sanctuary of the Champa kingdom and has been a World Heritage site since 1999. Its 71 monuments stand in eight groups, mostly brick towers with sandstone reliefs dedicated chiefly to Shiva. Bomb craters from 1969 lie beside them, and how the bricks were bonded is still not fully understood.

Cooking in Hội An starts with what market and river provide: bundles of fresh herbs, rice noodles, fish and shellfish. In the waterways of Cẩm Thanh, about 3 km from the old town, round bamboo basket boats slip between nipa palms, and small crabs are coaxed from the roots with bait on a bamboo rod.

An open market by the river has been part of Hội An since its centuries as a trading port, and UNESCO lists it among the old town's features. Local cooking begins at its stalls, with herbs, rice noodles and fresh fish. Cao lầu, whose chewy noodles are made from rice soaked in lye water, is rarely found outside the area.

Lantern making has been practised in Hội An for more than 400 years. A lantern starts as a frame of bamboo strips, soaked in salt water to keep termites away, and is then covered with fine silk stretched and glued panel by panel. The frame's shape and the fabric's colour decide how soft the glow will be.

Hội An has two kinds of lantern. Silk ones, stretched over a bamboo frame, hang in rows above the streets and from the boats; paper ones, folded like a lotus around a candle, are set afloat on the Hoài River. Since 1999 the town has held a lantern festival on the 14th day of each lunar month.

Hội An's cooking grew out of its past as a port, and several dishes are tied closely to the town. Cao lầu combines chewy, yellowish rice noodles with pork, greens, bean sprouts and little broth; mì Quảng is the other local noodle dish sold at the market stalls. Much of the eating happens on low stools at street corners.

In the old town, merchant houses, Chinese assembly halls and the wooden Japanese bridge, only about 10 metres long, line streets whose plan has barely changed since the trading days. Across the Hoài River on An Hội islet, the night market fills roughly 300 metres of Nguyễn Hoàng Street with food and lantern stalls.

The land around Hội An is flat delta country, easy to cross by bicycle on narrow lanes between rice paddies and vegetable gardens. On the river island of Cẩm Kim, the carpenters of Kim Bồng have worked wood for some 500 years, once building boats for merchants. Sedge is still grown here and woven into sleeping mats.

Trà Quế lies about 3 km from Hội An's old town beside the Cổ Cò River, where families have grown vegetables for nearly 400 years. More than 20 kinds of leafy greens and herbs grow on some 40 hectares, fertilised with river weed. The village dish is tam hữu, a small roll of prawn, pork and basil.

Within a few kilometres of Hội An's old town the scenery changes quickly: rice paddies, the herb beds of Trà Quế, then the nipa palms of Cẩm Thanh where the Thu Bồn River meets the sea. An open jeep covers this ground at an easy pace on back roads, close enough to see farmers at work in the fields.

Beyond the old town, the lower Thu Bồn delta is a patchwork of rice paddies, sandy tracks, small villages and river channels. A quad bike handles the dirt paths and muddy stretches that ordinary vehicles avoid, so you see working farmland rather than the roadside. The old town covers just 30 hectares; this is the far larger landscape around it.

Two sides of Hội An sit about 3 km apart. In Cẩm Thanh, dense nipa palms and narrow creeks once sheltered resistance fighters and are now explored by round basket boat. In the old town, a trading port from the 15th to the 19th century and a World Heritage site since 1999, timber merchant houses line the Hoài River.

Vietnam is the world's second-largest coffee producer, and about 97 percent of its crop is robusta, dark and strong. It is brewed slowly through a small metal filter called a phin, one cup at a time, and usually sweetened with condensed milk. Regional styles add their own twist: egg coffee comes from Hanoi, salt coffee from Huế.

Rice farming around Hội An long depended on the water buffalo, which pulled the plough through flooded paddies and still grazes along the field edges. Nearby in Cẩm Thanh, round bamboo basket boats thread the creeks between nipa palms near the mouth of the Thu Bồn River. Field, river and kitchen are closely linked here.

South of Hội An's old town, a ferry crossing of five to ten minutes leads to Cẩm Kim, one of the largest islands in the Thu Bồn River. Life here is rural: rice fields, lotus ponds and households that still make rice paper and noodles by hand. Most of Hội An's mat weavers live on the island.

Cù Lao Chàm is a group of eight islands about 16 km off the coast near Hội An, recognised by UNESCO as a biosphere reserve in 2009. Some 135 coral species have been recorded in the surrounding waters, so the reefs are the main draw for snorkellers. The largest island, Hòn Lao, has two fishing villages.

An afternoon in the green countryside near Hội An. We take you through the rice fields, past water buffalo and along small paths no tour bus fits on. At the Funny Duck Stop Farm, run by friends of ours, you can hold ducklings, go fishing and paddle a round basket boat. At sunset we sit in a restaurant right by the rice field, with live music and a view of the sky.

Huế’s dragon boats carry a painted dragon head on the bow and move slowly along the Perfume River after dark. On board you hear ca Huế, chamber music once played for the court and nobility and recognised as national intangible heritage in 2015. Robes modelled on the Nguyễn court give dinner the feel of a small royal banquet.

Between Huế and Đà Nẵng the railway keeps to the coast, passing through a series of tunnels around the Hải Vân massif with the sea right below the window. Before that it runs past Lăng Cô, where a lagoon lies behind a long sandy beach. The tourist train here started in March 2024, with one carriage in central Vietnamese style. On our ride there was live music on board.

After sunset the Perfume River turns dark and quiet, and the lights of the city take over. The landmark on the water is Trường Tiền Bridge, whose six steel arches span 403 metres and have been lit in changing colours since 2002. Folk songs from central Vietnam accompany the meal, with a few traditional instruments.

The Perfume River runs about 30 kilometres from the Bằng Lãng fork to the Thuận An estuary and is named after orchard blossoms that fall into the water in autumn. In the afternoon it is at its calmest: green banks, the citadel’s flag tower on the north side and Ngự Bình hill, 105 metres high. Tea on deck suits it.

Seen from a dragon boat, Huế lines up along the water: the citadel on the north bank, then gardens and villages further upstream. The best-known landing is Thiên Mụ Pagoda, founded in 1601 on a hill above the river. Its seven-storey octagonal brick tower, added in 1844, stands about 21 metres high and has become the emblem of the city.

Huế was the capital of Vietnam under the Nguyễn emperors from 1802 to 1945, and its monuments have been UNESCO World Heritage since 1993. A day in the city links the walled citadel, the riverside Thiên Mụ Pagoda and the royal tombs in the hills with everyday places such as Đông Ba Market, on its present riverside site since 1899.

Emperor Gia Long began the Huế citadel in the early 19th century; its outer walls run about 10 kilometres behind a moat fed by the Perfume River. The Ngọ Môn gate of 1833 leads into the Imperial City and to the Thái Hòa throne hall. Much of the Forbidden Purple City was lost in the fighting of 1947 and 1968.

The tombs of the Nguyễn emperors differ as much as the rulers did. Minh Mạng’s, built from 1840 to 1843, sets about 40 buildings along one strict axis; Tự Đức used his lakeside grounds as a retreat while still alive; Khải Định’s, finished in 1931, is concrete lined with glass and porcelain. Thiên Mụ Pagoda has a bell from 1710.

From 1954 to 1975 the Bến Hải River along the 17th parallel divided Vietnam, with Hiền Lương Bridge marking the line between north and south. In the Vĩnh Mốc tunnels around 60 families sheltered from bombing in almost two kilometres on three levels; 17 children were born there. Further west, the former Khe Sanh base recalls the 1968 siege.

Three places in Huế in one day. Thiên Mụ Pagoda has stood on a hill above the Perfume River since 1601, and its seven-storey tower was added in 1844. The Nguyễn emperors ruled from the Citadel until 1945, and it has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1993. The last stop is the abandoned water park on Thủy Tiên Lake, where a huge concrete dragon sits above the water. The park is officially closed. Whether you can get in may change, so we check for you beforehand.