What Tet Means for a Trip to Hanoi

I didn’t plan my first trip to Hanoi around Tet on purpose. I picked dates that looked fine on a calendar, booked flights, and only realized a few weeks out that I’d landed in the middle of the biggest holiday in the Vietnamese year. It changed the trip in ways I hadn’t expected, some good and some genuinely inconvenient, and I’ve planned around it deliberately ever since.

What Tet actually is

Tet, or Tet Nguyen Dan, is the Vietnamese lunar new year. It’s the equivalent of Christmas, New Year’s Eve and a national family reunion rolled into one, and it’s by far the most important date on the calendar here. Because it follows the lunar calendar rather than the Western one, it doesn’t land on a fixed date. It falls somewhere between late January and mid-February, and it shifts noticeably from year to year — some years it’s the first week of February, other years it slips back into the last days of January. There’s no shortcut for this: I always look up the specific date for the year I’m traveling, because assuming “it’s always February” is exactly the kind of mistake that catches people out.

This page is only about Tet itself and what it does to a trip. For the rest of the year’s festivals and public holidays, I’d point you to the dedicated holidays guide instead of trying to cover everything here.

The lead-up: flower markets and shopping

The two or three weeks before Tet are, in my experience, one of the most visually rewarding stretches of the year to be in Hanoi, even though it’s not the calm version of the city. Kumquat trees and branches of peach blossom get hauled through the streets on bicycles and motorbikes, temporary flower markets pop up around the Old Quarter, and Dong Xuan Market gets noticeably busier as people shop for new clothes, snacks and gifts before everything shuts.

If you like watching a city prepare for its biggest event, this run-up is worth building into the itinerary on purpose rather than treating it as an inconvenience to work around. The Old Quarter’s markets and shops are a good place to see this shift happen day by day.

What it does to a trip, practically

The effect on travel isn’t subtle. In the days leading up to Tet, Hanoi gets noticeably busier and more chaotic — everyone is shopping for kumquat trees, peach blossom branches, new clothes and gifts, and the streets around the Old Quarter and Dong Xuan Market fill up. Then, right around the new year itself, something close to the opposite happens: the city empties out. Family-run restaurants, small shops, tailor stalls and most of the businesses that give Hanoi its street-level texture shut their doors for several days while people go home to their families or, for many Hanoians, stay in and celebrate with relatives.

For a visitor, that means a stretch where a lot of the everyday city — the noodle stalls, the small cafés, the tailors — simply isn’t there. Bigger hotels keep running, the major sights mostly stay open on a reduced schedule, and the biggest attractions like the sights around Hoan Kiem Lake are still worth walking through, often looking their best with flowers and decorations everywhere. But if your idea of Hanoi is grabbing pho from a specific street stall or wandering into whichever workshop looks interesting, you may find the door closed.

Then, a few days later, it flips again. The city refills fast, decorations are still up, and there’s a genuine festive energy that’s hard to get any other time of year — lion dances, fireworks in some years, families out visiting temples and pagodas together. I actually think the days just after the main closure, once shops reopen but the decorations and mood are still there, are one of the nicer times to be in the city.

What’s still worth doing during the closure

The businesses that close are mostly the small, family-run ones — the sights themselves tend to stay open, just on a lighter schedule, and a few are genuinely better during Tet because they’re dressed for the occasion. The Temple of Literature usually stays open and gets decorated for the new year, and the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and Ba Dinh district sights are a reasonable option on a quiet closure day, though I’d check opening hours directly rather than assume a normal calendar applies.

Museums are more of a mixed bag — the Hanoi museums guide is worth checking against the specific dates you’re there. The water puppet theatre, on the other hand, is one I wouldn’t count on during the closure days themselves, since performances can be reduced or paused along with everything else.

Transport is the part that catches people out

If there’s one thing I’d flag above everything else, it’s transport. Tet is the single biggest domestic travel event in Vietnam — this is when people who work in the cities go home to their families in the provinces, and it happens on a scale that dwarfs any Western holiday travel rush. Trains out of Hanoi station, domestic flights and long-distance buses sell out weeks in advance, both heading into the holiday and in the days right after, when everyone travels back.

If your dates overlap with Tet even loosely, I’d book transport — especially anything toward Sapa or other overnight routes — as early as realistically possible. The general rule of booking ahead versus arriving and figuring it out tips much harder toward booking ahead during this window.

Local transport within Hanoi is affected too, if less dramatically. Getting around the city by taxi or ride-hailing app gets a bit harder to arrange during the closure days, simply because fewer drivers are working. It’s not a crisis, but I wouldn’t count on things moving at the usual pace.

Day trips and cruises during the closure

Ha Long Bay cruises, Ninh Binh day trips and the boat operators generally follow the same rhythm as everything else — crews go home for a few days, and schedules thin out or pause around the main closure. Most resume within the first week of the new year. If I were traveling around this time and still wanted an overnight cruise, I’d book something like a two-day cruise out into Ha Long Bay or a full-day trip out to the bay for either the run-up or the tail end of the holiday, and confirm directly with the operator rather than assume a normal calendar.

Craft-village and countryside trips, like a multi-day trip out to the tea hills of Thai Nguyen or a guided visit to the Dinh Bang communal house, tend to be less predictable during the closure days since they depend on small family-run venues, so I’d build in flexibility rather than lock a fixed itinerary.

Etiquette and what to expect as a guest

Tet is a family holiday first and a tourist attraction second, and that shapes how I behave around it. Prices for hotels, tours and even street food tend to rise in the days around the holiday, so I’d read the money and payments guide with that in mind and expect to pay a premium rather than be caught off guard by it.

It’s also a moment when a few customs matter more than usual — what colors and words are considered lucky, how to greet people, what not to do on the first days of the new year — and I’d rather skim the etiquette and customs guide before traveling than find out the hard way. None of it is complicated, but it’s the kind of thing that’s easy to get wrong if you assume an ordinary week in Hanoi.

How I actually plan around it now

My honest approach is this: I check the current year’s Tet date as early as I can, then look at where my travel window sits relative to it. A trip entirely before or entirely after the main closure runs close to normal, just busier and pricier in the days right around it. A trip that straddles the closure needs a lighter itinerary for those few days — fewer restaurant reservations, more flexibility, lower expectations of small shops being open — and a plan that leans into the festival atmosphere instead of fighting it.

For the specific dates in a given year, I don’t try to remember them or guess from a past trip. I check the monthly guides for whichever months my trip touches, since those track the current year’s calendar, and I’d suggest starting with Hanoi in January or Hanoi in February depending on your dates, alongside the best time to visit Hanoi overview for the bigger seasonal picture. That’s a more reliable approach than any fixed date I could print here, since the whole point of Tet is that it doesn’t sit still on the calendar.

One more thing I’d flag: I’ve seen articles quote a fixed number of Tet travelers or a specific visitor count for Hanoi during the holiday. I don’t trust those figures, and I won’t repeat one here — the scale is real and worth planning around, but I’ve never seen a number I could actually verify.

Where this fits in a wider itinerary

If Tet lands inside your travel window, I’d build the trip around it rather than try to ignore it. A three-day Hanoi and Ninh Binh itinerary or a three-day Hanoi and Ha Long Bay trip both work well either just before or just after the closure, when the city is either buzzing with preparations or full of festive energy again.

Wherever you land, it’s worth locking in accommodation early — the where to stay in Hanoi guide is a good starting point, since good options near the Old Quarter get booked up faster than usual around the holiday. And as with any busy period, it’s worth a quick read of the scams and prices guide beforehand, since a crowded, cash-heavy holiday is exactly when overcharging tends to creep in.