A plethora of art galleries and museums in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh help you immerse into Vietnamese culture.
In Hanoi, the most interesting cultural action takes place near Hoan Kiem Lake. Your mornings can start early with a personal, master-instructed Tai Chi practice before breakfast. Later, you can visit the art galleries rimmed around the lake where the finest artists share their paintings in Vietnamese style.
The art escapade extends to the villages nearby Hanoi like Ninh So, the bamboo handicraft village and Nhi Khe, where artists craft musical instruments and ornaments from wood, horn and bone.
Digging more into the intriguing history of Vietnam, your stops in Ho Chi Minh should include the National Museum of Vietnamese History, the lofty Basilica of Notre Dame Cathedral and the Cu Chi Tunnels, an underground network of passages during wartime.
Every month on the full moon day of the lunar year, the world heritage site of Hoi An turns magical when the residents replace electricity with paper lanterns of different shapes, sizes and colours. With its spectacular show, the Hoi An Lantern Festival is an unmissable event.
When you go deep into Vietnamese culture, you find more and more colours and shades that make Vietnam entrancing. One of them sparks in bright red fountains at the craft village of Quang Phu Cau, also known as the Incense Village, where the inhabitants practice their century-old tradition and produce crimson-coloured incense sticks in bunches making the village look like a red polka dot cloth.