Our favourite Vietnam tours and excursions

Sipping a sweet iced coffee at a street-side café is an unmissable Vietnamese experience — but there’s more to it than just a few ground beans and some condensed milk: these days, Vietnam is a bona fide, world-class, bean-brewing pro.

On this morning tour, you’ll start where coffee plays its most important role: fuelling the locals as they gear up for the day. After this, it’s time to dive deeper into the local coffee culture with a visit to an 80-year-old coffee warehouse, before concluding at a stylish “Coffee Studio”, where you’ll learn about expert brewing techniques, how to judge the quality of a blend, and maybe even try your hand at latte art.  

Get an insider’s look at the capital’s thriving contemporary art scene with curator and artist Nguyen Anh Tuan. 

You'll begin the day with a visit to the private collection of Suzanne Lecht, where you'll see works by some of Vietnam’s most exciting emerging artists. From there, Nguyen will guide you through an exhibition of virtual public art using an augmented reality app – the first of its kind in Vietnam – to see how young Vietnamese artists are pushing the boundaries of technology. Finally, you’ll round off the tour at Manzi Art Space, a chic gallery-cum-café-bar where a cold drink in the courtyard garden makes for a refreshing end to the day. It’s the perfect modern counterbalance to traditional Hanoi.  

 

If you ask us, there’s no better way to kick off your trip to Vietnam than with this cooking class at the home of Vietnamese MasterChef finalist Chef Ai. 

The experience starts with a visit to the local wet market, where Ai will guide you between mountains of fresh herbs and teeming buckets of crabs to pick out ingredients for the lesson. Then, after returning to Ai’s home kitchen, you’ll learn how to make a selection of dishes loaded with aromatic herbs, spices and sauces. This isn’t just an insider’s introduction to the flavours and textures of Hanoian cuisine, it’s a window into Vietnamese daily life – and the things you learn will set you up to make the most of the (many, many) gastronomic opportunities that await you on the rest of your trip.

Whether it’s a steaming bowl of pho or sizzling char siu pork, food is never just food in Vietnam.

As you’ll discover under guidance of expert food bloggers Mark Lowerson and Van Cong Tu, food is one of the best ways to connect with local people, understand regional differences, and immerse yourself in the local culture. That’s exactly what this tour is all about: taking you inside the culinary traditions of the capital via its tastiest street-food treats, and giving you an insight into the real lives of the Vietnamese people. 

Hanoi is a maze of streets, a hotch-potch of eras, a tangle of stories. 

Why just admire crumbling colonial townhouses when you can visit a local family who’ve lived in one for four generations? Why watch trains trundling past when you can hop onboard and meet the commuters? Wander the capital on your own and you’ll breeze past countless secrets waiting to be uncovered. On this tour, your guide is your passport to the hidden life of Hanoi -- taking you into the backstreets to seek out the best street food snacks and telling you the stories that will bring the city around you to life.