Vietnam

Vietnam has given Danes 45 days — and it changes the whole journey

Denmark is on a short list. Along with Sweden, Norway, Finland and eight other countries, Danish citizens can travel to Vietnam without a visa for up to 45 days. The scheme is valid from March 15, 2025 to March 14, 2028 and is independent of passport type and purpose. Most Danes use fourteen of the 45 days. That's where the trip typically goes wrong — not because fourteen days is too short for a good vacation, but because Vietnam is 1.650 kilometers long from north to south and has three different climates along the way. In fourteen days, you have to choose one third of the country and leave the rest. If you get three weeks or more, you stop choosing and start traveling through instead. It's the only decision on this page that really moves anything. Everything else — hotels, routes, time of year — falls into place afterwards.Limestone cliffs and tour boat in Ha Long Bay in Northern Vietnam

The country has been found.

Vietnam accepted 21,2 million international guests in 2025 — a 20,4 percent increase from the previous year and the first time it has exceeded 21 million. Compared to 2019, the last year before the pandemic, the number is 17,8 percent higher. European visitors grew the fastest of all at 38,8 percent. This means two concrete things for your planning. Ha Long Bay and Hoi An must be booked in advance during the high season — they didn’t have to five years ago. And the shoulder season has become more valuable than the low season: September and October in the north, March and April in the south, when the weather is still good but the buses are half empty. The price level has not yet kept up with the number of visitors. A bowl of pho still costs 10–25 kroner at a street food stall, and a domestic flight between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City is typically 300–600 kroner if you book a few weeks in advance.

North Vietnam: Hanoi, the Bay and the Mountains

Hanoi is 1.000 years old and doesn't act like a capital that knows it. The old quarter is 36 streets named after the crafts that were once made in each of them — silk, bamboo, tin, cotton — and several of them still do pretty much the same thing. The French left behind the boulevards and the opera house. Everything else is Vietnamese. The overnight stay is sharply divided. Sofitel Legend Metropole has been welcoming guests since 1901 and has a bomb shelter under the bar from the war that guests can go down to. At the other end are small family-run houses in the old town for under 500 kroner a night. We have taken a closer look at both in our review of the best hotels in Hanoi.In the afternoon, half of Hanoi sits on plastic chairs on the sidewalk and drinks beer — a fresh, unfiltered beer brewed that morning, without preservatives, for about five kroner a glass. It should be drunk the same day. It's not a tourist attraction; it's just what people do at five o'clock. Four hours east is Ha Long Bay with its almost 2.000 limestone islands. The bay was added to the UNESCO list in 1994 and was expanded in 2023 to now also include the Cat Ba archipelago. The advice that no brochure gives: take two nights on board instead of one. The one-day boats sail the same round at the same time. The two-night boats reach Lan Ha Bay to the south, where there is space. Further northwest lie Sapa and the rice terraces, and behind them Ha Giang — the loop of mountain roads along the Chinese border that has not yet become common.

Central Vietnam: Hue, Hoi An and Da Nang

The Forbidden City in the imperial city of Hue in Central VietnamHue was the capital of the empire from 1802 to 1945, and the citadel still stands—partly because it was hit hard during the Tet Offensive in 1968. That's what makes the place more interesting than a thoroughly restored backdrop: you can see what was lost. Ninety minutes south, the road crosses Hai Van Pass, where the mountains run right into the sea. There is a tunnel that the bus takes. Don't take the tunnel. The pass is the best hour's drive in the country, and on a motorbike with the luggage sent on, it's cheap to do right.Hoi An was an international port city in the 17th century, when Japanese, Chinese and Dutch merchants met here, and the city escaped the war almost unscathed. It is on the UNESCO list and is full of tailors who sew a suit in 24 hours. The good time is between six and eight in the morning, before the day-trippers arrive from Da Nang. In Da Nang itself, there is The Golden Bridge carried by two enormous stone hands, 1.400 meters up in the Ba Na Mountains. It opened in 2018 and became a photograph that half the world has seen. The bridge is 150 meters long. The trip up there by cable car takes longer than walking it.

South Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City, the Delta and the Islands

Ho Chi Minh City is still called Saigon in everyday speech, and the nine million people who live there are busy with something other than the city's own history. The War Remnants Museum and the Cu Chi Tunnels are still there and worth seeing. But the real pace of the city is found in District 1 after dark and in the markets at six in the morning. Southwest of the city begins Mekong Delta — 40.000 square kilometers of riverbanks, rice fields and floating markets. The most important thing to do here is to get there early: the market at Cai Rang outside Can Tho is in full swing between five and seven and is largely over by nine when the day boats from the city arrive. Out in the Gulf of Thailand lies Phu Quoc, which has been heavily developed in recent years, and further out Con Dao — a former prison island, now quiet, with turtles laying eggs between June and September.

The Phong Nha Caves — the Vietnam that few reach

Son Doong Cave in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, the world's largest cave passageIn Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park is located Son doong, the world's largest known cave passage. It's so big that rainforest grows inside it where the ceiling has collapsed. It was discovered by a local man in 1991 and first explored by a British team in 2009. Access is tightly regulated: one company has the permit, the trip takes four days, and the price is around $3.000 per person with a limited number of places per year. It's not a day trip, it's an expedition — and it has to be booked many months in advance. If you want it to be less demanding, The Dark Cave in the same national park with zipline over the river, kayaking and a mud pool inside the mountain. It costs a morning. We have put Son Doong in relation to the rest of the world in our overview of the most fascinating caves and caverns.

Food is not a side benefit

Street food in Hanoi with local guests on low plastic chairs Michelin came to Vietnam in 2023. In the 2026 edition, published on June 4, there are 193 selected restaurants in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang, of which 11 with one star, 72 with Bib Gourmand and three with green star. This is the first time the number of stars has reached double digits in the guide's four years in the country. The two new stars went to ONVIT in Hanoi and Upstairs in Ho Chi Minh City — the latter with four tables and a menu built on central Vietnamese traditions. But the Bib Gourmand list says most about how to eat here: 72 places where a full meal costs under a few hundred kroner. Vietnamese cuisine is based on fresh herbs, fish sauce and balance rather than fat, and it changes character along the way. Clear and cool in the north, spicy and complex around Hue, sweeter in the south, where the coconut milk comes in. We've gathered 21 Vietnamese dishes and where they belong, and take a closer look thịt quay, the crispy fried pork roast, which resembles the Danish one and behaves completely differently.

Nine sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List

Vietnam has nine sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List — six cultural, two natural and one mixed. Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba, the ancient town of Hoi An, the imperial city of Hue, My Son Sanctuary, Phong Nha-Ke Bang and the Citadel of Thang Long are among them. The latest was added in 2025: the Yên Tử–Vĩnh Nghiêm–Côn Sơn monastery complex, Kiếp Bạc, which is the Vietnamese heart of Buddhism. Nine places in a country the size of Vietnam is high. By comparison, Denmark has three. Want to see how they compare to the rest of the world, we’ve built an overview of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and the Best Reasons to Travel to Them.

Traveltalk chooses three

Three places to sleep: Sofitel Legend Metropole in Hanoi for the building and the bomb shelter under the bar. The Nam Hai near Hoi An for the beach and the distance to the old town. And a completely ordinary room with a view of the river in Can Tho — that's what gets you up at five o'clock for the market.Three places to eat: ONVIT in Hanoi and Upstairs in Ho Chi Minh City for what the kitchen has become. And a plastic chair at Bún chả Hương Liên in Hanoi, where there is no star and there will never be one.Three things to do: The night train north from Hanoi, where you wake up in the mountains. The Hai Van Pass on two wheels between Hue and Da Nang. And the floating market at Cai Rang at half past five in the morning, before the boats from the city arrive.

Golf, if you must

Vietnam has been building courses at a pace that has made the country a serious golf destination in less than twenty years — and several of them are close to what you need to see anyway. Ba Na Hills and Laguna Lang Co are both within an hour's drive of Da Nang and Hue, so a round doesn't cost a detour. We've reviewed the best golf courses in Vietnam.

How to lay the route

14 days: Choose one end. Either the north — Hanoi, Ha Long, Ninh Binh, Sapa — or the center and south: Hoi An, Hue, Ho Chi Minh City, the delta. Attempts to reach both ends at airports.21 days: North to south with domestic flights over the boring stretches. Hanoi and the bay, flights to Da Nang, Hoi An and Hue overland, flights to Saigon, two nights in the delta.45 days: Same route, but with train instead of plane, Ha Giang in the north, Phong Nha along the way and a week on Con Dao at the end. This is the trip that the visa exemption is designed for — and the one that almost no Danes take. More suggestions for what to bring can be found in our review of exciting travel destinations in Vietnam and in our status on Vietnam as a travel destination.

Map of Vietnam

Map of Vietnam with Sapa, Hanoi, Ha Long, Ninh Binh, Phong Nha, Hue, Hoi An, Ho Chi Minh City, Mekong Delta and Phu Quoc marked

Practical travel information for Vietnam

🛂 Visa and entry

  • Visa: Danish citizens can enter without a visa for up to 45 days. The scheme is valid from March 15, 2025 to March 14, 2028 and also includes Sweden, Norway and Finland.
  • Longer stays: e-visas of up to 90 days are applied for online at evisa.gov.vn.
  • Health declaration: not a requirement. Decree 165/2026/NĐ-CP introduced a declaration from 1 July 2026, but the Ministry of Health has clarified that it will only be activated in the event of an outbreak. Airports continue to routinely screen for fever.
  • Not: valid for at least 6 months with at least 2 blank pages.

💰 Currency and prices

  • Currency: Vietnamese dong (VND).
  • Cash is king — especially in markets and street food stalls; cards are accepted in hotels and in cities.
  • Price examples: pho or banh mi 10–25 kr. Domestic flights Hanoi–Ho Chi Minh City typically 300–600 kr.
  • Tip: not a requirement, but appreciated.

🚗 Transport, time and health

  • Flight time from Denmark: approximately 13–15 hours with one stop.
  • Around the country: Domestic flights connect the north and south; the train between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City takes a good day and a half over 1.700 km.
  • Best travel time: north February–April and September–November; mid-February–May; south December–April.
  • Time zone: +6 hours compared to Danish winter time.
  • Health: no mandatory vaccines; hepatitis A and mosquito protection recommended; malaria in some rural areas. Drink bottled water.
  • Security: generally safe — follow the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' travel advice.

🤝 Travel partner

The position is vacant. We refer our readers to one travel company per destination. If you are a specialist in Vietnam, we would like to hear from you — write to hello@leisuretalk.net.

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