The 100 Best Places in Vietnam

Bill Bensley designed this 47-room luxury hotel as a love letter to the opera house a few blocks away, imagining where the singers and costume designers might have stayed during the golden age of the art form. Every room pays tribute to a different opera figure, the spa runs theatrical, and the drinking options range from a chic bar to a full cocktail lounge. It holds a Forbes Five Star and three Michelin Keys, which tells you roughly what a night here costs.

Ănăn translates roughly as "eat, eat," which doubles as a mission statement for a contemporary Vietnamese restaurant sitting inside Ho Chi Minh City's oldest wet market. Chef Peter Cuong Franklin, a Vietnamese-American who went from banking to kitchens at Nahm in Bangkok, turns street food references into a Michelin-starred menu. The building also holds a cocktail bar and a noodle joint, so the name is working overtime.

Sitting on its own small islet just outside Hoi An Ancient Town, this hotel spa comes with a detail that reframes the whole stay: every night booked includes a complimentary 90-minute treatment. Vogue named it among the 100 best spas in the world, which tracks when the setting is river-wrapped quiet and the Ancient Town is a short walk away. Vietnam outside the gates is loud and fast; in here, neither.

Across from the Opera House on Lam Son Square, this luxury hotel wears its colonial-style facade as if it had stood there for centuries rather than decades. Rooms lean into French-era Saigon with period details and black-and-white city portraits on the walls. The landscaped pool garden gives you somewhere to hide from District 1's motorbike chaos, and the spa helps with whatever's left. A Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Key.

Graham Greene and Charlie Chaplin once slept here, and the suites still carry their names. This Forbes Four Star, Michelin One Key hotel near Hoan Kiem Lake is a colonial-era landmark whose original 1901 Heritage Wing has been carefully restored without losing the slight mustiness that makes old hotels feel earned. The newer Opera Wing adds a contemporary-classic counterpoint. Indochine-style rooms, a spa, an outdoor pool, and several dining options round it out.

Perched atop a 40-story skyscraper where Dong Khoi meets Nguyen Hue, this luxury hotel makes a considered case for maximalism: Italian-designed suites, ornament turned well past reasonable, and floor-to-ceiling views over a city that still runs mostly low-rise. The rooms are large even by international standards, and the signature two-level suites read less like hotel rooms and more like arguments. A Forbes Four Star property with a Michelin-starred Cantonese restaurant downstairs.

A chandelier of 1,100 suspended glass tubes catches the light above the dining room at this fine dining restaurant on the ninth floor of Le Méridien, run by Australian chef Sam Aisbett. The name is an Aboriginal word for flowing water, and the Australian thread runs through the room, from the paintings down to the bread course, where pan-fried dampers arrive plump and beer-enriched. It holds a Michelin star.

A seasonal tasting menu built around a single narrative theme, each course designed to advance the story rather than just fill a plate. This is contemporary Vietnamese fine dining inside a sleek room of black granite tables and a kitchen counter, part of a larger compound that also runs a whisky bar and a grill next door. The chef earned a Michelin star weaving traditional Vietnamese recipes into something more theatrical, without losing the plot.

A single tasting menu, no choices, no shortcuts, across the street from the Temple of Literature in the heart of Hanoi's old scholarly quarter. Gia is a contemporary Vietnamese fine dining room where the kitchen channels homesickness into something precise and quietly intricate, with acidity and texture doing a lot of the heavy lifting. It holds a Michelin star, and dishes that look calm on the plate tend to be anything but.

A cable car is the only way in, which sets the tone before the amuse-bouche arrives. This Michelin-starred fine dining room sits inside a recreated Indochinese colonial mansion on a hilltop, serving five- or eight-course menus that pull ingredients from Vietnam, France, and Japan. The cooking is formal and precise, the kind where onion gratin somehow becomes the most serious thing on the table. Dress accordingly.

Three cascading infinity pools step down toward a white sand beach between Da Nang and Hoi An, and the lobby is built to read like a temple. This Four Seasons resort holds a Forbes Five Star and earns it in the details: frangipani and spider lilies line the arrival path, villas run large and unhurried, and the spa sits around a lagoon filled with koi and lotus. The kind of place where leaving feels like a scheduling problem.

Perched on a cliffside above its own private bay inside Son Tra Peninsula Nature Reserve, this resort has red-shanked douc langur monkeys as neighbors, which sets the tone. Rooms, suites, and villas draw from traditional Vietnamese architecture, every one angled toward the bay, including the view from the marble bathtub. Villas add private infinity pools and saunas. Pierre Gagnaire's La Maison 1888 holds a Michelin star, and the spa runs sound healing alongside Thai and Vietnamese rituals.

The building itself reads like a dare, a swooping futuristic shell designed by Carlos Zapata Studios that overlooks the National Convention Center rather than the Old Quarter. This is a large, polished international hotel with 450 rooms, an expansive eighth-floor spa, indoor pool, and Japanese and Cantonese restaurants on site. The vibe is less colonial Hanoi and more contemporary Singapore, which is either a selling point or the whole point, depending on who you're asking.

A dinosaur skeleton hangs above the bar, which sets the tone pretty efficiently. The Haflington is a two-floor cocktail bar in the Old Quarter styled after the great natural history museums of Europe, all soft lighting, fossils, and shelves of old books. The menu, called The Jungle Book, runs from obscure classics to house signatures. It landed on Asia's 50 Best Bars list, which tracks with how seriously the cocktails are taken here.

Fuchsia orchids on black marble, koi ponds threading through palms and hibiscus, and sightlines so deliberately composed you'd swear a cinematographer laid them out. This all-suite-and-villa resort on Phu Quoc's white sand beach earns a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star by going all in: private pools, a speakeasy bar styled like a luxury train car, a rooftop infinity pool, and a spa that treats "innovative treatment" as a minimum standard.

Perched on a forested hillside above Vinh Hy Bay inside a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, this Aman resort earns its Michelin 3 Keys by making seclusion feel like an event. Villas with private pools and open-plan spa bathrooms face the water, the grounds stay mostly wild, and the architecture splits the difference between contemporary minimalism and local materials. Fresh Vietnamese food, a serious wellness complex, and easy access to the national park fill out the rest.

All 141 rooms are suites, each with floor-to-ceiling windows and a private balcony facing the East Sea, which sets the tone at this Forbes Four Star beach resort just outside Hoi An. The Hoiana complex is sprawling, with a casino, golf course, and beach club orbiting the main property, but the rooftop infinity pool and the seafood restaurant perched over the water are reason enough to stay put.

A long curve of Bac My An Beach fronts this full-service resort on Đà Nẵng's coast, where the infinity pool seems to dissolve straight into the South China Sea. Standalone beachfront cottages with private gardens give couples somewhere to disappear, while families work through a menu of watersports before reconvening at the sand-side bar for sunset cocktails. It's the kind of place that keeps everyone occupied without anyone having to negotiate too hard.

Seventy-three villas spread across 240 acres of a secluded Vietnamese peninsula, and the place still manages to feel quiet. This Michelin two-key beach resort leans into hand-crafted, sun-bleached aesthetics that keep the five-star comfort from feeling stiff, with styles drawn from indigenous housing forms. Most villas have plunge pools, some face the beach directly, and three restaurants means you're unlikely to leave for dinner. The excursion list runs from temple tours to open water, naturally.

A hundred modern-minimal villas stretch along China Beach just outside Danang, each walled for privacy, forty of them with their own plunge pools. The Nam Hai is a full-scale luxury beach resort, with three pools, four tennis courts, a spa with eight private suites, and two restaurants covering Vietnamese, international, and fresh seafood. The Michelin Guide awarded it 2 Keys. Pack light; everything else is already there.

The name is a dare and the room backs it up: raw brick, warm light, a towering back bar, and a heavy metal door that opens onto something that feels airlifted from Brooklyn into a Ho Chi Minh City colonial building. It's a proper cocktail bar, with barrel-aged mixes on the menu and bartenders who will skip the list entirely and write you a liquid prescription based on your mood. Old-school hip hop keeps the whole thing from taking itself too seriously.

Each of the eighty-nine villas here comes with its own private pool, which makes the case for never leaving fairly easy to make. This is a luxury resort on a crescent beach midway between Hue, Da Nang, and Hoi An, where the interiors draw from the elegant garden houses of Hue and layer in lacquerwork, silk embroideries, and artisanal ceramics. Resident guides handle heritage walks, cycling, and karst exploration for guests who do eventually surface. It holds two Michelin Keys.

The bright yellow-and-green townhouse at the end of a narrow alley is hard to miss, and the old wooden tables and vintage photographs inside make it feel like someone's very well-fed grandmother lives here. This Vietnamese restaurant earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand for a fried crab and rice porridge hot pot that brings crab, pigeon, and beef balls into a broth that tastes like it has been going since before you were born. English menus available; book ahead.

A family that has been rolling bánh cuốn by hand for generations, on a street in Hoan Kiem that smells like it, this is an old-school Hanoi street food spot where the rice rolls come out gossamer-thin and the dipping sauce is a family secret nobody is asking questions about. The bún thang, a Hanoi noodle soup piled with toppings, runs alongside. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand.

Yellow walls painted to mimic a village house, blue shutters included, sit a short walk from Ben Thanh Market. This Vietnamese home-cooking spot earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand for the kind of food regulars perch on wooden stools to eat without glancing at the menu. The pancake with shrimp and pork, served in a bamboo basket, gets most of the attention. Portions run generous and friendly to sharing.

Shelves of house-made ferments line the interior of this Vietnamese restaurant in Thảo Điền, chilli sauces and garlic vinegars signaling that the kitchen takes its prep seriously. Phở is built on three broths simmered from fresh bones for a full day, and the grilled bagrid catfish with crispy rice crackers is the kind of dish that makes you forget what you ordered before it. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, with a garden terrace out back.

An Indian chef runs the kitchen across three floors of a room dressed in the kind of warm, ornate detail that makes the rest of Da Nang feel very far away. The menu sweeps north to south across the subcontinent, and the lamb and spinach curry with garlic naan is the kind of thing that makes you ignore everything else you ordered. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks for a place this generous with both flavour and portion.

Wicker lampshades throw a warm glow over the high-ceilinged dining room at this Latin American restaurant in District 1, where the kitchen swings between Mexico and Argentina with tacos and empanadas that have pulled in a loyal following fast. The chef behind it has a Michelin Bib Gourmand to show for the effort. It reads relaxed but runs professionally, which is a combination rarer than it sounds.

Bún chả is the signature at this Northern Vietnamese restaurant on one of Hanoi's liveliest dining streets, and the grilled pork arrives the way it should, smoky and served with rice vermicelli in broth. The crab spring rolls and Vietnamese flan round out a menu that stays close to the capital's street food roots. The two-storey shophouse also sells ceramics from local artisans, which is either charming or distracting depending on your appetite. A Michelin Bib Gourmand.