Here are some tips from Eric if you plan to go to Vietnam for a holiday trip.

1) Direct flight on Vietnamese Airlines from Shanghai to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). Stayed at the Indochine Hotel (about USD35/night; booked through booking.com, since that way changeable/cancellable)—small, nothing special, but fine/good for us (a big king bed, for all four of us), excellent location. One day, saw the War Remnants Museum and the Reunification Palace. In the evening, went bowling at the Diamond Mall (4th floor?), then caught a movie there (13th floor?). The next day, arranged through Vivu Tours for a driver to take us out to the Cu Chi Tunnels, stopping at the Cao Dai Temple (at Tay Ninh) on the way (~USD120 for all of us, all-inclusive for the day). If I were to do it again, I might prefer to do the Tunnels visit by boat, but I waited until too long to do that, and as a result the boats had no room for us. As far as I could tell, there are two kinds of boats—a plebian one and a more elite (and more expensive) one. The Tunnels have two locations and we went to the further-away one because apparently it’s less likely to have gobs of tourists (we were the only ones there!).

2) Drove to Cat Tien National Park. Stayed at the Forest Floor Lodge, run by Mai, a British Vietnamese lady. Very nice—a highlight. She arranged the car from Saigon to there (about 3.5hrs, about USD75). We did the Crocodile Lake hike (5km each way) with an excellent guide (Roy, her British botanist husband), then in the evening the night safari.

3) Drove to Dalat; on the way, stopped at the Dambri Falls (nothing special)—about a 3.5hr drive arranged by Phat Tire Ventures (about USD90). Stayed at the YK Villa—like the Indochine, nothing special in terms of accommodation, but very very nice staff (although not as central as some others, maybe). Upon arrival, a half-day of kayaking; then, a full day of whitewater-rafting; then, a half-day of abseiling and canyoning, then an afternoon flight to Danang. Phat Tire handled all these activities—they were very good. (Flight—and later overnight train—tickets arranged through Footsteps Travel; very efficient.)

4) In Danang, stayed at Le Bambino (about USD40/night), a restaurant with two B&B-like rooms—very nice (run by a Vietnamese lady Vinh and her French husband). Spent a half-day rock-climbing on nearby Marble Mountain (Phat Tire again) and a half-day strolling around Hoi An, a pleasant provincial seaside village (a bit touristy). The next morning, drove out to the Angkor Wat-like (but much smaller) ruins at My Son—worth doing, but best very early in the morning, before the crowds arrive. Then drove north past Danang to Hue—on the way, stopped again at Marble Mountain to look at the marble workshops & buy some stuff, and stopped for a couple-hour walk at the beach at Lang Co—endless beach, no one on it (a little cold to swim, but the kids waded in the surf). Vinh arranged our driver for these excursions—about USD100 for a full day of driving around.

5) In Hue, stayed at Pilgrimage Village, one of the two ritzy places there—really nice—had two pools (although in the winter it’s a little cool to swim). (Book in advance, and directly with them, for the best rate.) Spent a day looking at the citadel downtown (not terribly impressive) and at the nearby city museum (even less impressive). Then booked a boat (at the dock, downtown in Hue) to take us up the Perfume River to the pagoda, then further up (~1hr) to where we could walk 2km to the Tu Duc Summer Palace, which was the highlight of our Hue visit. From there, we walked back to our lodging, and the next day we rented crappy bikes (incl. a tandem) from the hole in the wall across the road from our hotel to cycle out to Khai Dinh’s, Minh Mang’s, and Thieu Tri’s tombs. The next morning, Anh Dinh Palace museum—much better than the city museum—and then the overnight train to Hanoi.

6) In Hanoi, we immediately left for Cat Ba, which is a small town on the very big island on the south edge of Halong Bay. Our Cat Ba visit was arranged by Buffalo Tours because the hydrofoil service between the mainland (Haiphong) and the island is apparently ever-changing and I didn’t want to risk us missing it. We spent a night at the Holiday View Hotel (probably not one I would’ve chosen, but Cat Ba’s options are limited), then spent a day kayaking & rock-climbing in Lan Ha Bay (on the east side of Cat Ba Island), arranged by Buffalo through Slo Pony Adventures and spent the night at Nam Cat, in one of their 9 bungalows on a secluded beach—very charming. (If we didn’t have an 8yo with us, I would’ve rented the very nice bikes from Blue Swimming (in a town a 5min drive from Cat Ba) to cycle around the island and maybe visit Hospital Cave.)

7) Then in Hanoi (stayed in Hanoi Stay—another nothing-special place, but again very friendly, and excellent location right by Hoan Kiem Lake), in a day we visited the Temple of Literature and the History Museum, both worthwhile, and hopped on an overnight train up to Lao Cai (on the Chinese border), where we were picked up by a van, brought an hour away to Sapa to freshen up, and then we set off on a hike (14km each way) up to the top of Mt Fansipan, arranged by Origin Travel (about USD700 for the two kids and me, for the train up and back, lodging for several nights, all food, the shuttles between Lao Cai, Sapa, and the trail head, the guide, the porters). It was intended to be a three-day hike but we compressed it to two (one day up to base camp near the summit, the next day up to the peak and all the way back down).

8) Back in Hanoi (for change of pace, stayed at the Paloma—friendly, but less-good location, by Western Lake), we saw the Ho Chi Minh museum (not worth it, but we’d thought we were going to get to see HCM himself in the mausoleum—turned out that was one of the days when he wasn’t available), then arranged for a half-day trip out to “Perfume Pagoda.” Transportation handled by Ethnic Travel—USD50 for the 2hrs out and back. Once there we agreed with a couple of ladies to be rowed up the river to a temple, guided on a short hike, and back (2hrs; USD20). That would’ve been better if a full day. In the evening, we saw the last-in-the-evening (21h15) 45-min water puppet performance (out of about 5 daily) at the theatre on the NE corner of Hoan Kiem Lake—well worth it, but tickets get sold out well in advance. (We’d bought them at the theatre’s ticket office when we came through a week earlier.) Final morning, a visit to Bach Ma Temple on the way to the airport.
Voila. If questions, ask. We’d been scared a little by the many stories of scams and disappointments (on, for instance, Lonely Planet’s Thorntree forum, and on TripAdvisor), but in the event we were pretty satisfied everywhere—perhaps partly because forewarned is forearmed, and the most important thing is for your expectations to be met—so, merely, when you book something with someone, ask lots of questions about what you’re getting (what’s included), so you know what to expect. We met lots of interesting travelers as we went—lots of backpacker-types living in USD10/night hostels, a very few independent travelers like us, and quite a few folks traveling on tours. When booking a one-day tour, for instance, is lunch included? When it is, the guide usually tried to give us a “set meal,” and we usually insisted on ordering what we wanted, which caused consternation (the guide probably had a budget)—but invariably, ordering only what we wanted was cheaper than the set meal the guide wanted to get us (because we didn’t want three courses and lots of leftovers).

Upon arrival we bought a (very cheap) local GSM SIM so we would have a “local phone.” We also bought a 3G SIM for my computer so I could be online as we traveled, and it worked quite well, although only in the bigger cities. We found free wi-fi to be available in all our hotels and in many cafes. Vietnamese internet’s censored like China’s but not as bad—the only thing I could find that was blocked was Facebook, but the same VPN I use in China worked fine there. Brenda’s Blackberry worked everywhere.

We found our Western credit card accepted at any place where you’d expect tourists to be, but usually accompanied by a 3% fee. We paid all the tour agencies by PayPal, which incurred a 2.9% fee but was often easier for them.

Laundry can always be done by your hotel, but we found that near hotels there were often holes in the wall willing to (same-day) do your laundry for a much, much lower rate—usually USD1 to USD2 per kg (hotel piece rate usually 4 to 10 times that).

Proper breakfast was always included in the hotel rate. For lunch & dinner we tended to eat in restaurants (instead of “street food”) because some in our family were worried about Delhi belly—usually not ritzy places (although we went to the Opera Club in Hanoi, and it was very, very good). Cheap French & Australian wine was widely available @USD15, and Vietnamese (Dalat) wine for half the price. Local beer also widely available for as little as USD0.20/mug (on tap). Soft drinks everywhere for USD1, great juices, smoothies, shakes. “Real” milk rarely available.

Taxis ubiquitous, all with meters, cheap (flag drop, and per-km rate, between USD0.40 and USD0.75 depending on the company). But the meter is the “upper limit”—if you know where you’re going and it’s a longer distance (anything over 10km), you can negotiate down to as little as half that rate. As far as I could tell, the taxis everywhere were honest except in Hanoi, where any taxi caught by a tourist late at night at a trap (airport, train station) has a good chance of being rigged so that its meter’s distance ticks up as much as 4x as fast as it should. So, it’s good to take advantage of an offer by a hotel or tour operator to meet you upon arrival or to take you to where you’re going—what they’ll charge you is usually less than what an honest meter would reach (if a little more than you could negotiate on your own, if you’re into negotiating—but to do that, you need to know exactly how far away your destination is). When I’m in VN alone on business I usually get around by moto-taxi, but I wasn’t comfortable sending the kids off on their own. 

I think we hit a lot of the “usual” places tourists visit. Many folks like to head south of Saigon for a day or two or three in the Mekong Delta. Some folks will spend a day at the DMZ north of Hue, but it sounds like there’s not much there. There are a number of famous beach towns between Saigon (in the south) and Hoi An (in the middle), but beaches aren’t really our thing. I had actually hoped to rent a car and drive from Saigon to Hanoi, but Vietnam’s driver’s-license situation is like China’s—foreign licenses not accepted; and besides, that would’ve been a lot of driving through many places which probably aren’t that interesting. (Roads are slooow.)