Guilin or Hanoi?

Neither city is a beach destination, and in both you will mostly swim in a hotel pool. What differs is how you cool off. Around Yangshuo you can wade into calm shallows of the Yulong and Li rivers on a hot day. Hanoi has water parks on the edge of West Lake, and its nearest coast, at Ha Long, Cat Ba or Sam Son, needs a separate stay.

Guilin has a short but satisfying list of local dishes. There are mifen rice noodles at breakfast counters, seasoned with the city's fermented chilli sauce, river snails, and the beer fish Yangshuo is known for. After a few days the choice runs thin, and many restaurants near the sights cook for tour groups.

Hanoi is one of the great street-food cities of Asia. You eat pho at breakfast, bun cha at lunch and cha ca fried at your table, mostly at shopfronts that make a single dish. Slow-dripped coffee, egg coffee and fresh bia hoi make even the gaps between meals worth planning.

Guilin's sights are mostly hills and caves set in parks, such as Elephant Trunk Hill, Fubo Hill and the brightly lit Reed Flute Cave. The walled Ming palace of the Jingjiang Princes and the calligraphy carved into the cliffs at Longyin Cave are its main historic sites. A day or two covers it all.

Hanoi has three or four days of layered history. There are the guild streets and tube houses of the Old Quarter, the Temple of Literature, the French Quarter's boulevards and Opera House, and the Imperial Citadel near Ba Dinh Square. Its museums, above all the Museum of Ethnology and Hoa Lo prison, have no real equivalent in Guilin.

In Guilin an evening means a walk around the lit-up lakes and Zhengyang Street with skewers and a beer, and the karaoke is aimed at locals. Travellers who want a proper night out end up on West Street in Yangshuo, which is loud and touristy.

Neither is a late city, but Hanoi gives you far more to do after dark. There is bia hoi on low stools across the Old Quarter, the noisy backpacker lanes around Ta Hien, rooftop and cocktail bars, and a weekend promenade around Hoan Kiem. Evenings stay sociable until about midnight.

For scenery, Guilin is in a different league. The Li River cruise to Yangshuo takes hours among the karst towers that appear on Chinese banknotes. Rafting on the Yulong, the cycling lanes, the climbing crags and the Longji rice terraces are all within reach of the city.

Hanoi's nearest landscape of this kind is at Ninh Binh, two hours south, where boats row you through caves among similar limestone towers at Trang An and Tam Coc. In the city, nature means the path around West Lake. Ha Long Bay and Sapa both need a night away.

Both cities have a good range of outings, but of a different kind. From Guilin, trips mix villages with landscape: the stone lanes of Xingping, the old trading town of Daxu, the ancient Lingqu Canal at Xing'an, and the Zhuang and Yao villages up among the Longji terraces.

From Hanoi the outings centre on crafts and temples. You can see ceramics made at Bat Trang and silk at Van Phuc, walk among the laterite houses of Duong Lam, visit the temples of Hoa Lu, or take a boat and climb to the cave shrine of the Perfume Pagoda. Ha Long Bay is the trip everyone wants, but it works far better with a night on board.

Guilin is the easier of the two with children, because so much of it happens on water and on bikes. There is the river cruise, the brightly lit caves, rafting on the Yulong, and flat lanes around Yangshuo for older kids. There is no zoo or theme park and little English is spoken, so a driver or a helpful hotel matters.

Hanoi makes children very welcome, and the water puppets, the zoo and the water parks all help. The trouble is the traffic. Crowded pavements and streams of motorbikes make every walk with a pushchair hard work, so families tend to stick to short outings from a hotel near the lake.

In both cities visitors rely on cheap taxis and ride-hailing rather than public transport. Guilin's centre, set around its rivers and lakes, is compact and easy to walk. A high-speed train links it to Yangshuo, though the rice terraces mean a long drive on winding roads, and you will need a mobile payment app for daily spending.

Hanoi's sights are also close together, but walking between them is tiring when pavements are taken up by parked scooters and cooking stalls, and crossing the road takes practice. Motorbike taxis and cyclos give you other ways to get about, and day trips go by tour minibus or hired car.

Guilin's shopping is chain stores on Zhengyang Street and trinkets at the night markets. The things worth taking home are local: chilli sauce, osmanthus tea, Sanhua rice liquor, and Zhuang and Yao brocade.

Hanoi is the better place to shop, largely because the Old Quarter still groups its trades by street. Hang Gai is good for silk, embroidery and made-to-measure clothes. Lacquerware, Bat Trang ceramics, textiles from the northern hills and coffee are all worth packing, and the weekend night market runs up to Dong Xuan.

Day to day, Guilin is very cheap, with low-cost noodles, taxis and countryside guesthouses. The spending goes on the sights: the river cruise, the caves and the hill parks all charge entry, and a full programme adds up.

Hanoi stretches your money even further. Street meals, bia hoi, coffee, ride-hailing and boutique hotels in the Old Quarter all cost very little, and temples and museums charge only modest entry. Only extras such as international hotels and Ha Long Bay cruises push the bill up.

Guilin's performances are mostly spectacle. Impression Liu Sanjie lights up the karst peaks on the Li River at Yangshuo, and in town there are acrobatic and folk-dance shows and occasional Gui opera. They are worth seeing once, but there is little else.

Hanoi has more variety. Besides the water puppets by Hoan Kiem Lake, the colonial Opera House stages the national symphony orchestra, ballet and opera, though not on a regular programme. Ca tru sung poetry is performed in a few Old Quarter communal houses, and there is a small jazz scene.

Cheap massage is everywhere in both cities. In Guilin the restful choice is to stay outside the city, in guesthouses among the rice fields beyond Yangshuo, where days settle into cycling, tea and early nights. The Longsheng hot springs near the terraces are about two hours away.

Hanoi is a little ahead for pampering. It has calm spas with herbal baths and more polished hotel treatments, and the cafés and quieter lanes around West Lake offer some calm. Away from the lake, though, the noise of the city follows you.