Vietnam in 12 Days — Hanoi to Saigon, by Air, Rail and Bay

Hanoi, Lan Hạ Bay, Huế, Hội An and Ho Chi Minh City in twelve days, across 1,700 km, with five bases and no night on a train. This plan flies the long hops and takes exactly one train, and that is the whole argument: the Reunification Express end to end is 32–36 hours of hard sitting for scenery you get in a three-hour slice, so the only rail leg here is Huế → Đà Nẵng over the Hải Vân Pass (about 150,000 VND, one of the great cheap train rides anywhere), while Hanoi → Huế and Đà Nẵng → Saigon are 75- and 95-minute flights that cost roughly 1–1.5 million VND booked ahead. Anyone selling you the full run as romance has not done it. Weather here is three different countries and one blanket line would be wrong: the north is wet May–September and cold and drizzly December–February; the centre is dry February–August and has a genuine typhoon window from roughly September to November, when Huế and Hội An flood and boats stop; the south is dry December–May. February to April is the only stretch that works for all three at once, which is why this is built for spring — travel it in October and the middle four days are the ones that break. Ha Long is the part of this trip you must research yourself. The bay's boats vary enormously, brands are rebranded and impersonated constantly, and after the Wonder Sea capsized on 19 July 2025 killing 39 people, Quảng Ninh made AIS tracking, VHF and automatic suspension above Force 6 winds mandatory — so this file names criteria and a price band, not a boat, and tells you how to check the one you pick. Prices are bands, not quotes: VND's big numbers go stale fast and every figure here was checked on 26 July 2026 at roughly 26,300 VND to the US dollar — treat them as ±20% and re-check the two flights and the cruise, which move most. Budget about 17,000,000 VND per person: 15,900,000 of listed stop costs, of which the Lan Hạ cruise alone is 4,700,000 and the two domestic flights another 2,700,000, plus roughly 1,100,000 of unitemised Grab rides, water and snacks. Lodging is extra. Entry: nearly all nationalities now use the 90-day e-visa — 25 USD single entry, 50 USD multiple, applied for at evisa.gov.vn or thithucdientu.gov.vn, approved in about three working days. Vietnam has changed those rules three times since 2023; check the official portal yourself a month out and do not use the lookalike sites that outrank it.