You’ll start out early (of course) with pick-up from your hotel at 5:15am. We drop by ‘train street’ to capture the action as dawn locomotives rumble past and local Hanoians start their day.  Then it’s time to hit century-old Long Bien bridge, for a view over the city’s biggest and wildest wet market. We’ll mingle among the traders and market stalls for unique images of authentic Hanoi life.

We wander through the Old Quarter for a delicious local breakfast (our favourite Hanoi pho or banh my) and rejuvenating Vietnamese coffee, and then jump into our private car and head 1.5 hours south to Quang Phu Cau Incense Village. Here we’ll capture incredible images of incense drying in the sun – a rhapsody in red just made for travel photographers. We’ll also be shooting plenty of images in the village workshops, perfect for portraits of working life.  

Time for a quick local lunch before driving east, and over the Red River. Our destination is a little-known delta village with an ancient tradition of making wicker fish traps. These traps are no longer in common use, meaning the tradition is on the verge of dying out. We’ll be able to capture portraits of the local villagers at work on the traps, and have a chance to hear some fascinating stories of their life in the past.

Time to head back to Hanoi in late afternoon, and we’ll take the rural Red River dyke road, providing a chance to capture authentic images of countryside life as the sun goes down. We have dinner at a gourmet restaurant in the Old Quarter, before heading out for our final adventure in the capital, a Hanoi by Night tour. We explore the best and least-known Old Quarter spots to photograph after dark, culminating in an atmospheric shoot among the crowds outside Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum.  

We return to your hotel and say farewell at 10pm.