Destinations

January gives Japan its clearest skies, best Fuji views, deepest powder and lowest prices – once shogatsu, the three-day New Year shutdown, is out of the way.

October gives the north its clearest, most comfortable month and Halong its best cruising of the year – while Hue and Da Nang take the wettest month of theirs, at the height of typhoon season.

September turns the Sapa and Mu Cang Chai terraces gold, cools and clears the north into its best season, and starts the central coast typhoon season – with National Day on 2 September 2027.

August brings 420mm of rain to Hanoi across twenty-five days while the central coast stays dry and hot – the cheapest, quietest month of the year for foreign visitors, if you build in slack.

July puts the central coast at its dry, hot, most expensive peak while Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City stay hot, stormy, uncrowded and cheap – the most divided month of the Vietnamese year.

June is Hanoi at 34C, the south in full rainy season, and the central coast dry and calm – with Vietnamese school holidays filling the beaches and foreign visitor numbers at their annual low.

May puts the central coast in its dry season with the calmest sea of the year, floods the northern rice terraces, and opens with the 30 April – 1 May long weekend that sells out every domestic flight.

Tet falls on Saturday 6 February 2027 and shuts Vietnam down for a week – then leaves the quietest, cheapest fortnight of the first half of the year, with the south at its peak.

January is the best month in southern Vietnam and the coldest in the north – Hanoi at 21C with winter drizzle while Ho Chi Minh City is dry and sunny. And Tet arrives on 6 February 2027.

October is the changeover month: the southwest monsoon lifts off the Andaman, the Similan Islands reopen on the 14th, the north clears – and the Gulf islands start their own rainy season.