Transport in Vietnam and how to get around
Few words about our plan for the first 14 days. My parents came with us with only such limited time to see as much as they could. 😃 They wanted to see all. Of course one does not simply see everything. After many hours of research, checking up sights and transport we created a plan. It contains highlights of Vietnam without tiring too much with the transportation. Here it is.
Hanoi + Ha Long Bay -> ✈️ Da Nang -> Hoi An + Hue and My Son -> ✈️ Can Tho -> Can Tho + Mekong Delta -> 🚌 Ho Chi Minch City + Cu Chi Tunnels
Vietnam is quite a long country. It’s not very big by area, but it’s a narrow strip near the South China Sea (or East Sea how Vietnamese call it). The route from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh by car is over 1600km! That’s like going from our hometown Wroclaw 🇵🇱 to Rome passing Czech Republic 🇨🇿, Germany 🇩🇪, Austria 🇦🇹, and Italy 🇮🇹! Or like a nice drive from Vienna 🇦🇹 to Athens where you go through Hungary 🇭🇺, Serbia 🇷🇸, Macedonia 🇲🇰, and Greece 🇬🇷. Oh, and you need like 16 or 17 hours to make that trip in Europe. In Vietnam, you would need 32 hours and I suspect it’s very optimistic estimate. When you want to book such ticket for a train it says that you need really 32 hours. But they do take longer. With the bus, I would be afraid to check out. The transport itself is pretty solid but everything takes a lot of time. That’s why if you go to Vietnam for a couple of days and don’t want to spend most of on the train or bus it’s worth to catch a flight. You can see they bet on air transport. There are some local carriers, flights are cheap and it works. You can grab plane tickets in the similar price range like tickets for bus or train.
As I am writing this I checked various prices on route Hanoi — Danang:
- ✈️ plane — you can get tickets from 18 USD = 405 000 VND, time 1 hour 20 minutes
- 🚌 bus — on baolau tickets around 340 000 VND + online reservation fee 80 000 VND so 420 000 VND total, time 16 hours
- 🚆 train — on 12go.asia cheapest 2 class seats cost 546 000 VND, time 15 hours 55 minutes. It’s the only such price if you want higher standard or sleeper train it can go as high as 2 000 000 VND / person.
So, traveling by trains or buses in Vietnam isn’t cheaper and definitely isn’t faster. If you’ve got a little more time, the train ride is worth as there should be some spectacular landscapes along the coast. However, we rode the train on 2 routes: Nha Trang — Quy Nhon and Quy Nhon — Da Nang both were pretty close to the coast. We didn’t see the sea, only rice fields and villages. Transport part over.
Anyway getting all those information was crucial to plan our 2 weeks Vietnam trip. I prepared it by reading through a lot of guides and Internet groups and then I checked how we can really get there. In my opinion, if you want to see all Vietnam north to south there is no better way. You can skip Can Tho as the town is boring and you can grab Mekong Delta tour from Ho Chi Minh. But even seeing such places is interesting if you want to see the diversity of the country.
I hope you will find my article and our experience useful. We thought mainly about my parents who are used to traveling in well-organized tours. Where they are taken to every place with AC bus and they have no worries other than dinner that day. We wanted them happy. We wanted them to see a lot of this beautiful country. But we also wanted them to handle the speed of our little tour and to get some pleasure out of it. After all, we talked and I know we managed to satisfy those goals. I wish you great travels around Vietnam and seeing many spectacular places.
