Where to Stay in Vietnam — Choosing by City

Choosing a Vietnamese city is really one question: how much of each day are you willing to spend in a car? The answer is set by the area you book, not by the property.

• Days spent inside the resort → Nha Trang, Phu Quoc
• Beach in the morning, restaurants in town at night → Da Nang
• Everything on foot → Hanoi’s Old Quarter, District 1 in Ho Chi Minh City
• Short trip, minimal transfer time → Da Nang, or Cam Ranh in Nha Trang

Then there is the date. Vietnam is long enough north to south that one end is dry while the other is in monsoon. Picking the city first and fitting the dates around it is how trips go wrong.

The wet season runs opposite in the south and the centre

The familiar line — “Vietnam’s rainy season is May to October” — describes the south: Ho Chi Minh City and Phu Quoc. The central and south-central coast, which is Da Nang, Hoi An and Nha Trang, is wet September to December instead. The wet months in one region are the dry months in another, so if your dates are fixed, choose the city to fit them.

When	North (Hanoi, Sa Pa)	Centre & south-central (Da Nang, Hoi An, Nha Trang)	South (HCMC, Phu Quoc)
Feb–Apr	Drizzle and damp air for weeks	The driest stretch of the year	End of the dry season, heating up
May–Aug	Hot, with frequent rain	Nha Trang is at its driest	Peak of the wet season
Sep–Dec	Autumn is the clearest air of the year	Wet season. Hoi An adds flooding	Wet to October, then drying out

Midsummer is where the split bites hardest. In July and August, Phu Quoc is in the middle of its wet season while Nha Trang is at its driest all year — several times the rainfall in the same calendar month, and roughly double the number of wet days. Nha Trang is the only Vietnamese beach city covered here whose best weather is high summer. If your leave is fixed to July or August, that one line makes the choice for you.

Turn it around: from September to December, a beach trip belongs further south. The central coast is taking the rain then, with surf high enough that swimming is off on some days. The city pages carry the detail — Hoi An, where those three months reverse the recommendation; Hanoi, where February to April changes what room to book; and Sa Pa, where the terraces change colour by the month.

Da Nang — one beach strip, but “beachfront” means three different things

Almost every stay in Da Nang sits on the My Khe Beach strip. Han Market is 2.8–3km from the northern end, 4.5–4.6km from the resort section further south, and 9.3km beyond where the strip ends. If you plan to eat in town most evenings, that gap is the whole trip.

Nha Trang — four separate areas that don’t substitute for each other

Nha Trang splits into the Cam Ranh resort strip, town, Hon Tre Island and the northern coast. Cam Ranh is 12–18 minutes from the airport but has nothing within walking distance. Town puts the beach and the restaurant streets on foot and pushes the airport out to roughly 40 minutes; Hon Tre means a cable car or a boat every time you leave.

Hanoi — 1km apart, 13–15 minutes apart

Hanoi comes down to Hoan Kiem or Ba Dinh. Hoan Kiem sits 140–630m from the lake, so sightseeing needs almost no planning, but Noi Bai airport runs 42–44 minutes by car. Ba Dinh cuts that to 29–30 minutes and puts the lake over 4km away — a taxi each time you go into the Old Quarter. The two areas are barely 1km apart, so reading a map here will mislead you.

Ho Chi Minh City — District 1 is not one location

The Nguyen Hue and City Hall core of Ho Chi Minh City keeps the main sights within 150–700m, while the western end of the same District 1 is close to 2km from the Reunification Palace. Outside District 1 you are nearer the airport or a local shopping area, but sightseeing becomes a car ride. The airport is only 6–7km straight-line from District 1 yet still takes around 30 minutes, so distance is the wrong number to plan with here.

Phu Quoc — one label stretched across a four-fold airport gap

Every property on the island is listed simply as Phu Quoc, which hides an airport sitting 5.9km from one stay area and 25.3km from another. Duong Dong is the only stretch you can walk out of for dinner; the resort belts assume a car every evening.

Hoi An — the evening is the reason to be there

Hoi An divides between the old-town walking radius and the Cua Dai beach belt — 430m to the night market from the first, 4.5km from the second. The lanterns come on after dark, which is exactly when a beach-belt stay means calling a car. October to December brings flooding, and that is the one period when the answer changes.

Sa Pa — a mountain town, so the month shapes the room

Sa Pa splits between the town and the Muong Hoa valley. The town puts food within walking distance and puts buildings in front of the view; the valley gives you the view and takes a car ride each time. The terraces change colour by the month, so it is worth fixing when you are going before choosing where.

Da Nang or Nha Trang — the radius is the difference

Both are beach cities and searches pair them constantly, but they are used in opposite ways.

	Da Nang	Nha Trang
Airport ↔ town	2.4–3.3km	~25km · 40 min
Beach ↔ town	2.8–4.6km	Resort belt is ~25km away
Both from one hotel	Yes	You choose
Island option	None	Hon Tre (VinWonders)

In Da Nang the airport, the beach and the town sit inside one triangle. A city hotel is 2.4–3.3km from the airport and about ten minutes from the sand, so one booking gives you beach mornings and Han Market evenings. Hoi An also attaches easily as a day trip.

In Nha Trang that combination does not exist. Cam Ranh, where the resorts are, is 10–18 minutes from the airport and 25km from town; stay in town and the airport becomes 40 minutes. The easy arrival and the walkable evening sit at opposite ends.

• Short trip, minimal transfers → Da Nang. On two or three nights, Nha Trang spends over an hour on airport runs alone
• Several days inside a resort → Cam Ranh in Nha Trang, where the private-pool villas cluster
• Theme parks with children → Hon Tre island. Da Nang has no equivalent
• Walking out to eat every evening → both work, but Da Nang’s radius is shorter

How we choose the stays we cover

• Actual distance and travel time to both the airport and the city centre
• Whether the property has realistic room configurations for your party size (especially four or more)
• What is solved on-site versus what requires leaving the property
• Drawbacks that show up repeatedly in guest feedback

Rates move sharply by season and date, so we never state a price as fact. We lay out the conditions you need to judge a property and point you to the live rate at booking time.

Your e-visa fixes the airport you arrive at and the one you leave from

This page is about choosing between Vietnamese cities. If you choose more than one, the entry rules settle the order before your flights do — and they split hard by passport.

Passport	Before you fly	Maximum stay
UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland	Nothing — visa-free entry	45 days, under a resolution running to 14 March 2028
Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria	Nothing — visa-free entry, for tourism	45 days, under a separate resolution running to 14 August 2028
United States, Canada, Australia	An e-visa, even for a beach holiday	90 days

The second row is the recent one: Resolution 229/NQ-CP added those twelve countries from 15 August 2025 and writes the exemption for tourism specifically. The first row runs on Resolution 44/NQ-CP, in force since 15 March 2025. Two resolutions, two expiry dates — which is why the row you are in matters more than the shared “45 days”.

The e-visa is issued for the entry and exit checkpoints you name on the application, and it works only at those. A trip that lands in Da Nang and flies home from Hanoi has to carry both on the form. That reverses the usual order: the city sequence, and therefore the flights, is settled at the visa stage rather than afterwards — barely a footnote on a single-city trip, and the first decision rather than the last on the two-city itineraries this page keeps pointing people towards.

Two web addresses are official, not one. The immigration department has run the portal at both thithucdientu.gov.vn and evisa.gov.vn since 11 November 2024, and says so in its own notice. Some foreign government advisories still print an older address, which is reason enough to start from the immigration department’s site rather than from whichever link a search turns up. Imitation sites that copy the layout and add a service charge are common here, so the thing to check is the address, not the page.

The fee splits on single versus multiple entry: US$25 single, US$50 multiple, and it is not returned if the visa is refused. A single-entry visa is spent the moment you leave the country, so an itinerary that crosses into Cambodia or Laos and comes back needs the more expensive one — the same piece of forward planning the checkpoint rule already forces on you. Processing is stated as three working days, counted from the day the office holds both your information and the fee rather than from the day you opened the form. That is a stated maximum and not a typical turnaround, so leave room in front of a fixed flight date.

Passport validity: work to six months beyond the day you leave Vietnam, plus two blank pages. The British and Canadian governments word this differently — one counts six months from the day you arrive, the other six months past the day you expect to depart. Booking to the stricter reading costs you nothing and takes the argument off the check-in desk. Either way it is the opposite end from Korea, where a short visit only needs a passport valid past your departure date — so on a trip taking in both, Vietnam sets the requirement.

The pre-arrival declaration is not compulsory. Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security marks it in its own text as not yet mandatory, and the British and Canadian advisories say the same. It has been running as a pilot at Tan Son Nhat in Ho Chi Minh City since 15 April 2026: you file in the three days before you arrive and a QR code comes back. What is not settled is which other airports it reaches — the expansion dates circulating online appear on no Vietnamese government page, and an embassy notice as recent as 7 August 2026 still describes the rollout in the future tense and as voluntary. Ask your airline when you confirm the flight. The only address is prearrival.immigration.gov.vn, and the ministry has itself warned about copycat sites collecting card details.

Checked 10 August 2026. Visa policy here moves by resolution and at short notice, and the cost of a wrong assumption is being denied boarding rather than mildly inconvenienced. Confirm on the official portal and on your own government’s travel advice before you fly.

A rented scooter is not the fix for a resort-belt address

The gap between the resort belts and anywhere you can walk to dinner is the recurring problem on this page: Cam Ranh 12–18 minutes from the airport with nothing in walking distance, an airport sitting 25.3km from one Phu Quoc stay area, the southern end of the My Khe strip. Hiring a scooter looks like the obvious way to close it, and for several nationalities that option is not legally open.

• US, Canadian and Australian licences are not valid in Vietnam, and neither are the international driving permits issued in those countries. Vietnam recognises only permits issued under the 1968 Vienna Convention. The US embassy states plainly that a foreign licence is not valid even when accompanied by an international driving permit.
• UK licence holders can drive on a 1968-convention IDP carried alongside the licence itself.
• Anything above 50cc needs a Vietnamese licence regardless of what else you hold.
• Driving without third-party insurance is illegal.

So when you weigh a resort belt against a town address, count the evening ride as part of the package rather than assuming you will ride yourself out of it. On the Cam Ranh strip or the Phu Quoc resort belts, that means a car every evening you want dinner outside the property.

From the airport to the hotel

An offer of a free lift to your hotel, made to you inside the airport, is a warning sign unless you arranged that transfer yourself in advance — the British government flags this specifically. A pickup you arranged already has your name and the property’s name attached to it; an offer that arrives out of nowhere has neither.

The same advice recommends using a ride-hailing app such as Grab, and checking the car and the driver against what the app shows before getting in. Da Nang International has a designated GrabCar pick-up lane at the international arrivals terminal, which takes the searching out of the first ten minutes.

Booking in an app also puts the destination into the app rather than into a conversation, which takes the haggling and the language problem out in one step. It is also why the transfer distances on this page are worth reading literally: a 25.3km run to a Phu Quoc resort is a number worth having before the car pulls away rather than after.

At check-in, and what you carry

Hotels and guesthouses normally file guest registration with the local police on your behalf, which is why reception asks for your passport when you arrive. Ask for it back as soon as that is done — the Canadian government advises against leaving your passport with the property.

Cash above 15 million VND or US$5,000 must be declared on the way in and on the way out. For everything else, confirm prices in dong; a figure quoted in another currency is worth converting back before you agree to it. Tipping is not obligatory, and higher-end venues may already have added a service charge, so read the bill before adding to it.