What’s the Best Way to Get Around Vietnam?

Should You Drive, Ride, or Walk During Your Vacation to Vietnam?

Vietnam is a diverse country with huge cities, swaths of rural areas, and thousands of miles of roads. When you visit Vietnam on an international vacation, what’s the best way to get around? Should you rely on public transportation and let someone else do the driving for you? Is it better to rent a car and get where you want when you want? Are the small regional jets that operate across the country the best way to travel in Vietnam?

One thing is for certain in Vietnam: the vehicular traffic can get absolutely crazy, especially to an outsider who isn’t used to the rather creative way the cars, motorcycles, and scooters weave their way around the roads. If you hail from a calm and sedate place where the kids learn to drive tractors before they learn to drive cars, you might find your heart in your throat as you try to cross the street.

When I traveled to Vietnam, I used a variety of different modes of transportation around the country. To cover large distances, I flew on regional planes. In town, I used a combination of my feet, bicycles, and taxis. The two modes of transportation I didn’t use were cars (and mopeds and anything related) and public transportation like trains and buses.

After experiencing the rather unique traffic patterns in Vietnam, I probably wouldn’t mess with driving myself, but I could see getting on a train if I wasn’t in a hurry to get somewhere. As you plan your Vietnam itinerary, you’ll probably want to figure out how you’ll get to each place, which will help with timing things in your schedule like checking into homestays, getting on aircraft, and going on guided tours. Let’s explore transportation in Vietnam.

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You can walk along the waterfront in Hoi An and take a boat ride if you wish.
You can walk along the waterfront in Hoi An and take a boat ride if you wish.

Walking Around Vietnam

I have to admit that I venture out on foot more often than any other type of transportation on most of my travels. The only time I don’t consider walking is when the distance to my destination is just too great. I’ll book a taxi if I’m going across town, or I might consider public transportation as long as it’s not too overly complex. Public transport is great, but not if it requires a degree in transportation science to get from one line to the next.

When we visited Hoi An, a small town south of Da Nang that sits along the coastline, we stayed in a residential area that was around a twenty-minute walk to the waterfront with all the shops, restaurants and touristy activities. We strolled down there multiple times during our stay (mostly to get food) and found that the walk wasn’t too much to handle.

Obviously, if you’re facing some mobility issues, a taxi to cover some short distances could offer the best experience, especially due to their affordability and the very reasonable tips required. However, if you’re at all ambulatory and willing to walk between ten and 20 minutes, you can definitely reach a lot of what you might want to see on foot. Not only did we walk to the waterfront for food and pictures, but we even walked about ten minutes to reach our bicycling tour of the countryside.

A few days later, when we arrived in Hanoi in the north, we also took the opportunity to walk around, mostly to the restaurants I’d researched before our trip (I always have a list of places we can eat, which is helpful when we don’t otherwise get recommendations from our hosts and guides). The traffic in Hanoi was pretty crazy, so it did take some self-awareness to remain safe while walking, but I’d recommend exploring anywhere you can in Hanoi on foot.

Watch out for the scooters wherever you travel on foot in Vietnam.
Watch out for the scooters wherever you travel on foot in Vietnam.

Should You Rent a Car in Vietnam?

Owning a car in Vietnam is a fairly expensive proposition, so many of the country’s citizens buy scooters and mopeds to get around town rather than cars. Whenever we took a taxi (usually from the airport), we were picked up in a car, but we were always surrounded by a huge number of scooters and small motorcycles. And let me tell you, the traffic patterns in Vietnam are like nothing you’ve ever seen.

As a resident of Los Angeles, I feel like I’m decently experienced with driving in heavy traffic, but nothing I’ve ever learned as an American traveler and driver has ever prepared me for the way traffic moves in Vietnam. It’s like this amazingly chaotic dance where everyone is just a hair away from disaster. However, even though it looks quite crazy at times, the whole thing seems to work really well, especially if you’re experienced in that sort of driving.

For most travelers to Vietnam, I’d recommend against renting a car unless your only driving time would occur in very rural areas. And even then, the traffic always seems to feel a little chaotic even when you’re not in a big city. The photo you see above was one I snapped in Hanoi near our hotel, which is one of the biggest cities in Vietnam, but the smaller cities like Da Nang and villages like Hoi An had the same sort of crowded streets unless you were in a really rural area.

If you do decide to rent motorized transportation in Vietnam, I’d say that you could probably find your way with a scooter or moped but that a full car just isn’t the best way to travel. Renting a scooter will get you from point A to point B when you want to go where you want when you want, but so will your feet in many circumstances.

Halong Bay in Vietnam from above while standing on a rocky hill.
Sometimes, the best way to see Vietnam is by boat. This is Halong Bay.

Can You Travel By Train in Vietnam?

Many of Vietnam’s major and minor metropolitan areas are served by trains, but getting between those places on a train isn’t always the quickest option. Vietnam isn’t blessed like neighboring China with lots of trains, so you may find it a little time-consuming to take the train. Let’s take the example of traveling from Hue to Da Nang.

These two popular towns along the central Vietnamese coast are separated by about 100 kilometers, but the train takes almost four hours to travel between the two locations. If you’re in pursuit of a slow journey throughout Vietnam with plenty of time to look at the scenery, this mode of transportation might make sense, but you’ll need to budget a lot of extra time for the experience.

Let’s take another example. Travelers will commonly fly into Ho Chi Minh City when visiting Vietnam and will visit the city for a few days before moving on to the next place. If you decide to travel up the coast to Da Nang, you’ll spend somewhere between 17 and 18 hours on a train. Alternatively, you can take a regional plane from Ho Chi Minh to Da Nang, and the journey will take about an hour in the sky.

I would venture to say that the trains in Vietnam are worth it if you’re interested in an interesting experience but that they’re definitely not the swiftest option. Not only are the small regional airlines that fly throughout Vietnam much faster, but they’re often not that different as far as price goes. My tickets from Ho Chi Minh City to Da Nang were something like $35 USD. However, if you’re spending months in Vietnam and want to explore the country inch by inch, train travel is an option, but for many travelers who don’t have a wealth of time at their disposal, flying will make more sense.

An airplane from VietJet Airlines, a small carrier in Vietnam.
Flying regional airlines in Vietnam is a convenient way to get around.

Using Small Regional Airlines to Fly Around Vietnam

When I conducted my research for my Vietnam itinerary, I checked out all of the options and eventually decided that taking planes was the best choice based on the amount of time I had for travel, their cost, and the general ease of flying. I have to admit that using the airports in Vietnam wasn’t an entirely blissful experience, but none of the flights were that long, so I feel they were still the right choice for our itinerary, despite some hiccups.

One of the biggest issues you might face when flying the smaller airlines in Vietnam within the country’s borders is the timetable. We encountered delays for every flight we took except for the flight that took us out of the country and across the border into Cambodia. Fortunately, the delays didn’t significantly impact any tour or anything I had planned, but our driver in Hanoi ended up having to wait at least 90 minutes after our scheduled arrival time.

The biggest two factors for me in choosing airplane travel within Vietnam were the cost and the quickness of the flights. It only took an hour to fly from Ho Chi Minh to Da Nang on one flight and another hour to fly from Da Nang to Hanoi a few days later. Taking trains or buses would have meant days of travel time, which just wasn’t realistic for how many days in Vietnam I had available.

After having experienced a few flights in the country, I’d still recommend them despite the delays, but I would be really careful about scheduling anything too soon after you expect to land. We landed in Hanoi 90 minutes late, but it was in the evening and I only had dinner and checking into our hotel planned. If I’d had a tour planned, we might have missed it.



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