Hai Phong is the third largest city in Vietnam, around two million people on the Red River delta coast, and it is the principal port of the north. Most foreign visitors experience it as a transit point on the way to Cat Ba Island and Lan Ha Bay, which is a reasonable use of it and also a miss, because Hai Phong is one of the more characterful Vietnamese cities and almost entirely free of tourists.
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The French developed it as a port from the 1870s and the legacy is visible: wide boulevards, a municipal theatre from 1904 modelled on European opera houses, and stretches of colonial villas and shuttered shopfronts, many of them shabby and lived-in rather than restored. The city is also known within Vietnam for two things: flame trees, which line the streets and bloom red in May, giving it the nickname the city of red flamboyant flowers, and food.
The food is the strongest single reason to stop. Banh da cua, a crab noodle soup with dark brown rice noodles, is Hai Phong's dish and is generally agreed to be best here. There is also banh mi que, thin baguette sticks filled with pate, and the seafood you would expect from a port.
This guide covers the city, Do Son and Cat Ba, the seasons, safety and the full packing list.
The City
Hai Phong is best approached as a walking and eating city rather than a sightseeing one.
The centre is around the Opera House and the Tam Bac lake, with the colonial quarter spreading from it. The Hai Phong Museum sits in a colonial building and covers the city's maritime and wartime history, including the mining of the harbour in 1972. Du Hang Pagoda, in the south of the centre, is the oldest religious building in the city, from the seventeenth century, and is a quiet working temple.
The markets are the substance: Cho Sat, the iron market, and the street-food lanes around Minh Khai and Le Loi, where the crab noodle soup is. Eating in Hai Phong is done on plastic stools on pavements, early and cheaply, and it rewards pointing at what other people are having.
Out of the centre, Do Son is the city's beach resort on a peninsula twenty kilometres south-east. It is a Vietnamese domestic resort rather than an international one, with brown delta water and a casino, and it is interesting more as a window on how Vietnamese families holiday than as a beach. The Do Son buffalo fighting festival in the eighth lunar month is a genuine local tradition.
Trang Kenh and the Bach Dang river, where Vietnamese forces defeated Mongol and Chinese fleets, sit north-east of the city and matter enormously in Vietnamese historical memory.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
The Gateway to Cat Ba
If you are heading to Cat Ba or Lan Ha Bay, Hai Phong is the practical hinge, and a night here is better than a rushed connection.
Ferries and speedboats run from Hai Phong to Cat Ba, and a road bridge now links the island to the mainland network via Cat Hai, so buses can drive most of the way. Services are frequent in summer and thinner in winter, and they stop altogether in bad weather.
Hai Phong also has an international airport at Cat Bi with domestic and some regional flights, which makes it a sensible alternative entry point to the north instead of Hanoi, and there are trains and frequent buses to Hanoi in around two hours.
The practical advice is not to plan a same-day arrival, transfer and boat in the typhoon months, because any one of the three links can fail and the whole chain stalls.
When to Go, and the Northern Seasons
October to December and March to April are the best windows. Summer is hot, wet and the peak of typhoon season, and winter is cool and damp.
Autumn, from October to early December, is the best weather of the year here: dry, clear, comfortable in the mid twenties, and the calmest sea for crossing to Cat Ba. Spring, March and April, is warm and increasingly humid, with the flame trees blooming in May.
Summer, May to September, is hot and humid in the low thirties with heavy rain, and it is typhoon season in the Gulf of Tonkin. Hai Phong is a coastal delta city and typhoons here are a serious matter: ferries stop, flights are cancelled, streets flood and the city has taken direct hits with real damage. This is the single largest practical consideration for a summer trip.
Winter, December to February, is the season visitors misjudge. Highs sit around 17 to 20C, it is damp, grey and often drizzly with sea mist, nights drop into the low teens, and buildings have no heating. Packing for Vietnam as a tropical country leaves you cold here for weeks at a time.
Is Hai Phong Safe for Women Travelers
Hai Phong is a safe working city and the risks are roads, weather and water rather than crime.
The FCDO publishes no advised-against areas anywhere in Vietnam and no country-level warning, which for a country of this size is worth stating plainly. Its guidance concentrates on road safety, which is the genuine risk to a visitor, along with petty theft in the cities, typhoons and flooding in season, and the unexploded ordnance that remains in some rural areas and is a reason to stay on marked paths rather than a reason to avoid the country.
Crime against visitors is low and this city sees very few foreign tourists, which produces friendly curiosity rather than hassle. Solo women generally report an easy time. Petty theft is the realistic concern, mainly bag snatching from passing motorbikes, so carry a bag on the side away from the road and keep your phone out of your hand at the kerb. As a port city with a nightlife district there is the ordinary caution about drinks and about bars that tout aggressively; stick to places with prices displayed.
Road safety is the genuine danger, as everywhere in Vietnam. Traffic here is dense, fast and heavy with trucks because of the port, and crossing roads is a skill. If you rent a motorbike, note that most travel insurance excludes motorbike accidents without a valid licence endorsement, which leaves many visitors effectively uninsured.
Beyond that: on the water, check that a boat to Cat Ba carries accessible life jackets, because standards vary and Vietnamese bay tourism has had serious incidents. Do Son's beach has strong currents, murky water and limited lifeguarding, so it is not a place for a casual swim. Typhoons in summer will strand you, so leave slack. And air quality in the delta can be poor in winter, which matters if you have a respiratory condition.
Use an international clinic rather than a district hospital for anything serious, and understand that they will want payment or a direct insurance guarantee before treating. Make sure your policy covers medical evacuation, because for a genuine emergency outside the two big cities the answer is often a flight to Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City or Bangkok. Drink bottled or filtered water only, and be more careful with raw herbs, cut fruit and ice than with hot food cooked in front of you, which is generally the safest thing you can eat.
The Hai Phong Packing List
Base layers, and this is the item people leave at home
The mistake is treating northern Vietnam as uniformly tropical. Hai Phong in January is 18C, damp, grey and unheated indoors, which is exactly the condition where merino beats cotton by the widest margin: it insulates while damp, keeps working under a wet shell, and does not chill you when you stop moving. In summer the same thin layer handles the swing between humid streets and hard air conditioning. Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron and 160gsm with no synthetic blend, and a merino wool base layer for women is genuinely necessary here from November through March.
Mid layer
A fleece mid layer from November to March, which you will want indoors as well as out, and on any boat crossing, where wind over water is much colder than the shore.
Rain, and the typhoon months earn it
A properly waterproof packable rain jacket for women. Delta rain in summer is torrential rather than showery, and winter drizzle is persistent. A cheap local poncho over the top is what everyone here uses on a motorbike.
Footwear
Walking shoes with grip that you accept will get wet, because pavements flood quickly and the city is best seen on foot. Merino wool socks plus a spare pair, since nothing dries fast in delta humidity.
On the water
A waterproof dry bag for the Cat Ba crossing and any boat trip in Lan Ha Bay, where spray is normal and there is often no shelter.
Insects and the small things
A DEET based repellent, because dengue is present in Vietnam and the delta in the wet season is where you will be bitten most. Cash in dong, because card acceptance outside hotels is thin. And a torch for power cuts and unlit lanes.
Essential Resources for Women in Hai Phong
Emergency numbers: 113 for police, 115 for an ambulance and 114 for fire and rescue. English is not reliably spoken on any of the three, so if you can, ask hotel staff or a passer-by to call on your behalf, which is normal practice and not an imposition.
Non-emergency police: the Hai Phong city police. Report a theft in person for the report your insurer will require, ideally with someone who speaks Vietnamese.
Tourist police: Vietnam has no dedicated tourist police force. In a city with few foreign visitors your accommodation is by far the fastest route to any official help.
Main hospital or clinic: Viet Tiep Friendship Hospital is the main general hospital in Hai Phong and there are private international clinics in the city. For anything serious, Hanoi is about two hours away and has the country's best international hospitals, which is the reason to hold insurance covering medical evacuation.
Official health authority: the Vietnamese Ministry of Health website was not reachable when this guide was written, so the substitute given here is the World Health Organization country office for Vietnam, who.int/vietnam, which carries current outbreak and health advice.
US State Department travel advisory: the Vietnam advisory. Read the current level there directly rather than relying on a figure printed in any guide.
UK FCDO travel advice: gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/vietnam, and read the safety and security page rather than only the landing page, because that is where the substance sits.
Official tourism authority: the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism, vietnam.travel
Solo women safety assessment: Hai Phong is a comfortable city to travel alone and an unusual one, because it is a large Vietnamese city with almost no foreign tourism, so what you meet is friendly curiosity rather than hassle or hard selling. Crime against visitors is low. Petty theft is the realistic risk, mostly bags snatched from passing motorbikes, so keep your bag on the inside away from the road and do not stand at the kerb with your phone out. As a port city it has a nightlife district where the ordinary care with drinks applies and where you should pick bars with prices displayed. The real dangers are practical. Roads are the big one: traffic is dense and fast and heavy with port trucks, crossing is a learned skill, and most travel insurance will not cover a motorbike accident unless your licence carries the right endorsement. On the water, check that a Cat Ba boat has accessible life jackets before boarding, because standards vary and Vietnamese bay tourism has had serious incidents. Do Son's beach has strong currents, murky water and limited lifeguarding, so treat it as a place to watch rather than swim. In summer, typhoons in the Gulf of Tonkin stop ferries and flights outright, so never plan a same-day arrival, transfer and boat. And in winter, pack for 18C and damp, because nothing indoors is heated.
Reading On
For the country-level picture, start with the Vietnam travel guide for women. For why a damp northern Vietnamese winter needs merino rather than cotton, read the guide to merino wool base layers for women. Every destination we cover is indexed at the travel packing guide for women, and the base layers are at the Roman Trail collection.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
