Four places, judged by the stay

We include a place on this site when two things are true. Travellers ask for it by name, and there is at least one hotel there worth building several nights around. That is why Hanoi, Hoi An, Siem Reap and Luang Prabang have their own pages, and why other places appear only inside the journeys.

Halong Bay is the clearest example. It is one of the most requested places in the region, and it appears on our 16-day route, but it is a night on a boat rather than a stay in a hotel, so it does not get a page of its own here. The same goes for Hue, which we use as a three-night riverside stop on the Vietnam Heritage Hotels route, and for the south-central coast around Vinh Hy and Ninh Van Bay, which closes the North to South route.

• What the place is, including the parts that have been overrun, written plainly
• How many nights, and what you lose with one fewer
• When to go, month by month, with the bad months named and what they still offer
• How to get in, by air, with the schedules we found and the date we checked them
• What it costs outside the hotel: the published entrance fees, with sources
• When to leave it out — every page has this section

Room rates are not on these pages. For each place, the hotel comparison covers setting, size, season and minimum nights for the stays we suggest, and the month-by-month page puts the four places on one calendar.

Hanoi links by non-stop flight to Luang Prabang and to Siem Reap, and by domestic flight to Da Nang for Hoi An. Siem Reap links to Luang Prabang by a non-stop that runs only a few days a week. Those flights shape almost every route that combines the three countries.

The Indochina Grand Stays route uses all four places in sixteen days. The Cambodia & Laos in Slow Luxury route uses two in nine. Most custom trips sit somewhere between: two or three places, never fewer than three nights in each.