Da Lat or Hanoi?

Neither city is anywhere near a beach, and both need a separate stay on the coast. The difference lies in how you get there. From Da Lat the sea at Ninh Chu Bay or Nha Trang is a winding drive down the mountain passes. Hanoi is further from its coast at Ha Long, Cat Ba or Sam Son, but it does have hotel pools and the water parks by West Lake for a swim in town, whereas Da Lat's lakes are for pedal boats only.

Hanoi is one of the great places to eat in Asia, while Da Lat has a good local table but little more. In Hanoi, families have often cooked one dish for decades: pho as a clear broth at dawn, bun cha at noon, cha ca fried at the table, with egg coffee and fresh bia hoi in between.

Da Lat's cooking comes from its cool valleys: avocados, artichokes, strawberries and hotpot with wild greens. Its evening market is the real draw, with grilled rice paper and bánh căn. Arabica from the nearby slopes makes its café terraces a pleasure, but the range runs out in a few days.

Hanoi has much more to see, and it is history with weight: the Temple of Literature, the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long, the guild streets of the Old Quarter and the Museum of Ethnology, which is excellent. It fills three or four days without repeating itself.

Da Lat's heritage is mostly the look of a French hill station: villas among the pines, the Art Deco railway station and Bao Dai's Summer Palace. Its most memorable sights are the eccentric ones, such as the Crazy House and the porcelain-covered Linh Phuoc pagoda. Two days is plenty.

Hanoi offers far livelier evenings. Pavements fill with bia hoi drinkers from late afternoon, the bar lanes around Ta Hien are loud by nine, and the weekend walking streets around Hoan Kiem turn into a long promenade. It still winds down around midnight.

Da Lat goes to bed much earlier. Its evenings mean the night market, a café with live music and the one labyrinthine backpacker bar most visitors try once. The cold sends almost everyone home well before midnight.

Da Lat is built around its landscape, and Hanoi is not. From town you can climb Langbiang to 2,167m, trek the montane forest of Bidoup-Nui Ba, abseil down the falls at Datanla or ride a bike downhill through coffee farms, all in cool air.

Hanoi's own green space amounts to its lakes, with a cycling path around West Lake and tai chi at dawn by Hoan Kiem. The famous northern scenery, the limestone towers of Ninh Binh, is a day's outing away, and Ha Long Bay and Sapa need nights away.

Hanoi is by far the better base for excursions. Ninh Binh combines Trang An's river caves with the old capital at Hoa Lu, the Perfume Pagoda is reached by rowing boat, and the craft villages of Bat Trang and Van Phuc are close to town, as is laterite-walled Duong Lam.

Da Lat's mountains cut it off. Its one real outing is the long descent to Phan Rang for the Cham towers and pottery villages. Closer to home, a half day takes in K'Ho villages, coffee farms and silk farms.

Da Lat suits children better, largely because Vietnamese families have shaped it as a resort for their own children. Strawberry picking, the coaster down to Datanla, the cable car to Tuyen Lam Lake and the horses in the Valley of Love fill the days in mild weather, although teenagers may tire of the kitsch.

Hanoi makes children very welcome and has the water puppet theatre, but it is harder going. Crowded pavements, constant motorbikes and a humid summer mean short outings from a hotel near the lake work best.

Hanoi is somewhat easier to get around because its sights are close together. You can walk from the Old Quarter to Hoan Kiem, the French Quarter and Ba Dinh, though you will often have to step into the road, and cheap ride-hailing covers the rest.

In Da Lat only the hilly centre around Xuan Huong Lake is walkable. The pagodas, falls and farms are spread across the hills, so every outing means a taxi, a hired scooter or a motorbike driver, on roads that turn slick after rain.

Da Lat's shopping is mostly for the larder. The central market sells candied fruit, strawberry jam, artichoke tea and coffee beans, and the night market adds wool hats and a few embroidered silk pictures. None of it is worth setting an afternoon aside for.

Hanoi is the place to bring an empty bag. Whole streets of the Old Quarter still sell a single trade, and Hang Gai will make silk clothes to measure in a day or two. Bat Trang ceramics, lacquerware and textiles from the northern hills make good buys, and the weekend night market runs up to Dong Xuan.

Both are very cheap, and a modest budget goes a long way in either city. What differs is where costs can creep up. Da Lat's rooms fill and rise in price around Lunar New Year and the long national breaks, so book ahead then. In Hanoi the extras add up instead, with international hotels, imported wine and Ha Long Bay cruises.

Hanoi has a real stage culture. There are water puppets with live music by the lake several times a day, ca tru sung poetry in Old Quarter communal houses, a long-running jazz scene and occasional symphony and ballet at the colonial Opera House.

Da Lat has no formal season. Its musical life is the small evening café where local singers perform ballads, many of them about the city itself, with some staged gong music on the side.

Both make a fair place to unwind, but in different ways. In Da Lat the restfulness comes from the setting: mist on the lakes, cool mornings and slow coffee, with proper spas at the villa resorts in the pines.

In Hanoi you unwind indoors, with cheap foot massage and herbal baths after a long day on foot, because the streets themselves are noisy. Calm there means West Lake or the lakeshore at dawn.