Key Takeaways
- Most packing lists tell you what to bring. The useful question is what to bring, what to buy on arrival, and what to leave at home.
- Vietnam is a manufacturing country with cheap, good clothing and same-day laundry everywhere. Packing for a fortnight is a mistake; pack for five days.
- Bring the things that must fit you or must be trusted: shoes, prescriptions, a card that does not charge foreign fees, and any technical layer you already own.
- Buy the disposable and the bulky there: poncho, dry bags, flip-flops, toiletries, and a warm layer if you are going north.
- Leave the rain jacket, the towel, the water purifier and most of the first-aid kit. All three climate zones are hot, and pharmacies are everywhere.
Packing lists for Vietnam nearly all have the same problem. They are inventories, and an inventory cannot tell you the one thing that decides what goes in the bag: whether the item is easier to carry from home or to buy when you land.
Vietnam makes clothes for the rest of the world, sells them cheaply, and washes them for you the same day for about a dollar a kilo. That changes the arithmetic of packing more than any list of items can.
How do you decide what actually goes in the bag?
Three questions, in order. Everything below follows from them.
What should you bring from home?
Shoes you have already walked in. The single most important item, and the hardest to buy locally if you have larger feet, because Vietnamese sizing runs small. Trainers or light walking shoes. You will walk further than you expect on uneven pavements.
Prescription medicine, in its box. Bring enough for the trip plus a week, keep it in the original packaging, and bring the prescription itself. Pharmacies are excellent for ordinary things and unreliable for a specific drug you depend on.
A card with no foreign transaction fee. Worth more than any gadget on this list. ATMs and cash in Vietnam explains why the fee structure matters more than the exchange rate.
Sunglasses and any technical layer you already own. Not worth buying twice. If you own a thin merino top or a packable windproof, bring it. If you do not, do not buy one for this trip.
An unlocked phone. So a local eSIM works when you land. Vietnam eSIM and SIM cards has the setup.
A universal adapter. Vietnam mostly uses two round pins and accepts two flat pins, so many plugs fit without one, but a cheap adapter removes the question.
What should you buy when you get there?
Everything in this section is cheaper, better suited to the climate, and available within ten minutes of arriving in any city.
- A plastic poncho, around 20,000 dong. Beats a breathable jacket in this heat and covers a bag and a motorbike at the same time. Vietnam’s rainy season explains the reasoning.
- Dry bags. Cheap, and they do the job a rain cover pretends to do.
- Flip-flops. Everyone wears them, they dry, and they cost almost nothing.
- Toiletries. Shampoo, sun cream, insect repellent, razors. No reason to carry liquids through an airport.
- T-shirts and shorts. If you run short, buying two is faster and cheaper than packing four.
- A warm layer, if you are going north. The mountains are genuinely cold from December to February and cool at altitude year-round.
If your route runs through the capital, the guild streets make this quick, and the Old Quarter before the Loop covers where to go for what.
What should you leave at home?
A proper rain jacket. It will be too hot and it will wet out anyway. This is the item most confidently recommended by lists written from a temperate country.
A travel towel. Every guesthouse provides one.
A water purifier. Bottled water costs pennies and is everywhere. Refill stations exist in most hostels.
A large first-aid kit. Pharmacies are on every second corner, staffed, and cheap. Bring plasters, any personal medication and rehydration salts. Leave the rest.
Two weeks of clothes. Five days is the right number for any trip length. Laundry is same-day and costs about a dollar a kilo.
Jeans. Heavy, hot, and they take two days to dry.
What changes if you are riding a motorbike?
A road trip in the mountains is a different packing problem from a city and beach trip, and it is worth separating.
- Thin gloves. Three days of wind is what ruins hands, not cold. The cheapest useful item on this page.
- Long sleeves and long trousers. Sun on the back of a bike for six hours is not the same as sun on a beach, and covered skin is also what stands between you and gravel.
- A buff or scarf. Dust, sun and cold, in that order of frequency.
- Sturdy shoes, not sandals. Feet go down first when a bike goes over.
- A soft bag, not a hard case. It has to strap to a bike.
- Not a helmet. Your rental or tour provides one. Carrying a helmet on a night bus saves nothing.
What you wear matters more than most lists admit, and the reasoning is in what actually goes wrong up there. If you are still deciding whether to ride at all, self-drive versus an easy rider is the decision that changes everything else.
How big should the bag be?
Smaller than you think, and the constraint is not the airline.
Three things decide it. Guesthouse stairs, which are steep and narrow in a tube house and which you will climb twice a day. Night buses, where luggage goes underneath and space is not generous. And a motorbike, where the bag either straps on behind you or gets left somewhere.
A 40 to 50 litre soft backpack is the size that works for almost everyone, and it is comfortably enough for five days of clothes plus the things you bought on arrival.
A small daypack for the bike, with the dry bag inside it. This is what you actually carry each day.
Not a hard-shell suitcase if any part of your trip is on two wheels. It cannot be strapped to anything, and wheels are useless on the surfaces you will be crossing.
If you are doing a multi-day loop, most guesthouses and tour operators in Ha Giang city will store your big bag for free while you ride, and you take only the daypack. Ask before you book anything; it is standard, and it changes what you need to carry entirely.
What about the three climate zones?
Vietnam is not one climate, and packing for “Vietnam” is how people end up cold in Sa Pa in a vest.
The south is hot all year. The centre is hot with a wet autumn. The north has a genuine cool season and mountains that are cold in winter. If your route covers more than one zone, the warm layer is not optional, and it is still cheaper to buy in Hanoi than to carry from home.
Which zones are worth your time in a given month is a separate question, answered in the best time to visit Vietnam.
Common questions
What should I pack for two weeks in Vietnam?
About five days of clothes, walking shoes you have already broken in, prescription medicine in its box, a fee-free bank card and an unlocked phone. Buy toiletries, a poncho, flip-flops and any warm layer after you land, where they are cheaper and better suited to the climate. Laundry is same-day and costs roughly a dollar a kilo, which is why five days covers two weeks.
Do I need a rain jacket for Vietnam?
No. A breathable waterproof is too hot for this climate and soaks through anyway. Buy a plastic poncho locally for around 20,000 dong; it covers you, your bag and the front of a motorbike at once. Bring dry bags for electronics instead.
What clothes are appropriate in Vietnam?
Ordinary light clothing is fine in cities and at the coast. Temples and pagodas expect covered shoulders and knees, which a scarf solves. In the northern mountains, long sleeves and long trousers are practical for sun and for riding rather than a dress code.
Is it cheaper to buy clothes in Vietnam?
Considerably, and the quality is often good because much of the world’s clothing is made there. The exception is shoes if you have larger feet, since local sizing runs small. Bring your shoes; buy most of the rest.
What do I need to pack for the Ha Giang Loop specifically?
On top of the general list: thin gloves, long sleeves and long trousers, a buff for dust and sun, sturdy closed shoes, a soft bag that straps to a bike, and a warm layer at any time of year. Not a helmet; your rental or tour supplies one.
A note on what this list is not. It is not a complete inventory, deliberately. Complete inventories are the reason people arrive with a 70-litre bag for a trip where they will carry it up a guesthouse stairwell twice a day. Everything above is either something you cannot easily replace, something you should not bother carrying, or a judgement about which of those two a given item is.
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