Day Trips & Nearby

Hanoi is where you sleep before the north

More people leave Hanoi in the morning than stay in it, and the three destinations that empty the hotels each ask a different question of your schedule. The honest answer to "can I do it in a day?" is different for each one.

The four that are worth the day

• Ninh Bình — Tràng An and Tam Cốc. Limestone karsts rising out of rice fields, rowed through on a small boat, and the one people mean by "Ha Long Bay on land". Trains run from Hanoi's main station in roughly two and a quarter hours; cars take a little over two. ⭐ The easiest genuine day trip from Hanoi, and the only one that does not feel rushed.
• Ha Long Bay. Around three to four hours each way by road since the expressway. ⚠️ A day trip is nine hours of travel for four hours of boat, and the bay is famously different in the early morning and the late afternoon — which is exactly what a day trip misses. One night on board is the version people come back happy from.
• The Perfume Pagoda — Chùa Hương. Two hours south, then a rowed boat up the Yến stream, then a climb or a cable car to a cave shrine. ⚠️ From the second lunar month it holds the largest pilgrimage festival in Vietnam and the queues are extraordinary. Outside the festival it is quiet and strange and very good.
• Bát Tràng. The ceramics village, barely half an hour from the city across the river, and the shortest worthwhile trip on this list — an easy half day when the weather has ruled out anything longer.

The overnight ones

• Sapa, in the far north-west near the Chinese border — terraced rice valleys and the Hmong and Dao communities who farm them. The night train to Lào Cai takes roughly eight hours and is an experience in itself; the expressway coach is faster and less fun. ⛔ Not a day trip under any circumstances.
• Mai Châu, about four hours south-west: a valley of stilt houses and rice, much less visited than Sapa and reachable in a long weekend.
• Hải Phòng and Cát Bà, east towards the coast — trains run from Hanoi to Hải Phòng in around two and a half hours, and Cát Bà gives you the same limestone as Ha Long with a fraction of the boats.

⚠️ Before you book any of them

Journey times above are approximate and the fares change often. Check them with the operator you are actually booking, on the day you are actually travelling — road times in particular vary by hours in the wet season.

Check which station. Hanoi has more than one, and the trains north and east do not always leave from the main one. See Getting Here & Onward.

A day trip costs you a Hanoi evening. If your trip is three days or fewer, ask whether an extra evening in the Old Quarter is worth more than a photograph of a bay you saw for four hours.