Vietnam Real Food Adventure

Eating the length of the country

Vietnam's food is the point of this trip, not a sideshow. The route runs the full length of the country — Hanoi in the north, Hue and Hoi An in the central region, the Mekong Delta in the south, finishing in Ho Chi Minh City — with Ha Long Bay folded in as the obligatory scenic set piece. It's a small-group itinerary built around what people actually eat, cook and sell, rather than the usual monuments-and-coach-windows circuit.

Hanoi and the Secret of Pho

Day one ends with a pho-focused evening walk led by your group leader. You try a bowl of beef pho at a Michelin Bib Gourmand spot, then pho cuon — fresh rice noodle rolls that count as street food in the capital but don't travel much beyond it — and finish with a pho cocktail, which is exactly the gimmick it sounds like but tends to work. Hanoi's coffee, typically served thick with condensed milk (egg coffee for the braver), is worth arriving early for. Optional add-on trips run to Sapa and Ninh Binh if you want a few extra days in the north.

Ha Long Bay, Hue and Hoi An

Day two heads east to Ha Long Bay, where you board a traditional junk boat to sail among the roughly 2,000 limestone karsts rising out of the Bac Bo Gulf. You visit Surprise Cave, eat a meal cooked onboard, and sleep on the water. The bay is touristy — there's no pretending otherwise — but the overnight structure means you see it after the day-trippers have gone.

Further south, Hue is the former imperial capital, and the meal here is the trip's standout. You tour the monuments by motorbike — the local way, and much more useful than a coach in the heat — then eat lunch in the garden of a chef whose family descends from the royal household. It's a specific, unrepeatable meal rather than a generic cultural lunch. Hoi An, by contrast, is the cooking-school town: expect a class with a local chef, often in their home, and market visits for ingredients. Cao lau, the pork-and-noodle dish made only with water from a particular local well, is the thing to order.

The Mekong, and the practical side

The delta is known as Vietnam's rice bowl, and you cover a slice of it by traditional sampan between fruit orchards and flower growers, stopping to meet produce vendors before pulling up at a veranda-wrapped homestay for the night. It's the most unvarnished part of the trip and, for many travellers, the best.

You're in a small group with an Intrepid leader throughout. Accommodation is a mix of hotels, the junk boat and the delta homestay. Several meals are included — the Hanoi welcome dinner, the junk-boat lunch, the Hue royal-family lunch among them — but you'll buy plenty of your own along the way, which is rather the point in a country where the best food is usually the cheapest. Internal transfers between Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An and Ho Chi Minh City are handled for you. International flights are not included.

The trip suits adventurous eaters who'd rather spend an afternoon in a wet market than a museum, and who don't mind a few long travel days between the highlights.