Hanoi or Hong Kong?

For a beach, Hong Kong is the only real option of the two. Repulse Bay is a short bus ride from Central, Shek O feels like a village outing, and Lantau's Cheung Sha has quieter sand. From late spring the water is warm and the main beaches have lifeguards.

Hanoi lies inland on the Red River delta. The nearest sea is a long journey away, so swimming in the city means a hotel pool or a water park near West Lake.

Both are top food cities, and they differ more in style than in quality. Hanoi is a city of one-dish stalls on low plastic stools: pho at breakfast, bun cha at lunch, cha ca fried at the table, and egg coffee up a narrow staircase. The street is where it is best, and its fine dining is only a thin layer.

Hong Kong covers more ground. You get Cantonese dim sum in noisy teahouses, roast goose, milk tea in the cha chaan teng diners and seafood picked from tanks in Sai Kung. At the top end, Central has some of Asia's most acclaimed Chinese and French dining rooms.

For historic sightseeing, Hanoi gives more. The Old Quarter's guild streets, the Temple of Literature, the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long and the Museum of Ethnology make a full three or four days of real history, even if few single sights stop you in your tracks.

Hong Kong's main sight is the city itself: the skyline from Victoria Peak, the trams and the tenement blocks of Kowloon. Much of the colonial city has been rebuilt, so old buildings are fewer. M+ and the Palace Museum in West Kowloon are strong museums, but the old fabric is patchier than Hanoi's.

Hong Kong is the better place for a late night. Lan Kwai Fong fills with street drinkers at weekends, Soho and Sheung Wan take cocktails seriously, and the bars of Wan Chai keep going into the early hours.

Hanoi's evenings start earlier and are more fun than wild. The bia hoi stools and the backpacker lanes around Ta Hien are lively by nine, but most places go quiet around midnight.

Hong Kong is far ahead outdoors. Country parks start right behind the towers, so the Dragon's Back, the MacLehose Trail and the volcanic coast of Sai Kung fit easily into a city day without a car.

Hanoi itself is flat, built-up and often hazy. The West Lake shoreline path is the main green outing. The great limestone scenery of Ninh Binh, Ha Long Bay and Sapa needs an early start or a night away.

Hong Kong has the more varied range of easy outings. Macau is about an hour away by ferry, high-speed trains reach Guangzhou in under an hour, and the outlying islands of Cheung Chau, Lamma and Tai O are close by. Trips into mainland China involve a border crossing, so check the entry rules for your passport.

Hanoi's day trips go into the countryside: the temples of Hoa Lu and the Bai Dinh pagoda at Ninh Binh, the boat ride to the Perfume Pagoda, and craft villages such as Bat Trang. They are rewarding, but many involve long hours in a minibus.

Hong Kong is much easier with children. Disneyland, Ocean Park's pandas, the Peak Tram and the Star Ferry are all simple to reach, and air-conditioned malls give a break from the heat. The drawbacks are weekend crowds and small hotel rooms.

Children are warmly welcomed in Hanoi, and the water puppets are a hit. But the motorbikes, the blocked pavements and the humid summers mean most families keep their outings short and hire a car with a driver.

On foot, the two are closer than you might expect, since each keeps its main sights near one another. In Hanoi, though, a walk from the Old Quarter to Ba Dinh means weaving round parked scooters and pavement kitchens and edging into a slow tide of motorbikes. Hong Kong's walks are steeper and stickier, but the pavement belongs to pedestrians, and the climb above Central is helped along by outdoor escalators.

Once you need more than your own legs, the gap opens up. Hanoi's rail lines barely touch the places visitors go and the buses assume you read Vietnamese, so most people call a cheap car or motorbike taxi on an app, or take a cyclo around the Old Quarter. In Hong Kong the MTR runs from the airport to the New Territories, and the same card also works on trams and harbour ferries, so you rarely need to arrange anything else.

Hong Kong is a shopping destination in its own right. It has luxury flagships on Canton Road, huge malls with no sales tax, and street markets in Mong Kok and Sham Shui Po that are worth seeing even if you buy nothing.

Hanoi's shopping is smaller and more local. Silk and made-to-measure clothes on Hang Gai, Bat Trang ceramics, lacquerware and hill-tribe textiles are the good buys. There is no luxury street, and many souvenir shops sell the same goods.

Hanoi is far cheaper. Street food, coffee, beer, boutique hotels in the Old Quarter and ride-hailing all cost very little, and only extras such as Ha Long cruises or imported wine add up.

Hong Kong's hotel rooms are among the costliest in Asia, and an evening in Central costs as much as in a big Western city. Local noodle shops, the Star Ferry and free hiking trails soften the bill, but it never comes close to Hanoi.

Neither is a city to plan a trip around for its stages, but Hong Kong has more on. The Philharmonic plays at the Cultural Centre, West Kowloon has large modern venues, and you can see Cantonese opera at the Xiqu Centre or in village bamboo theatres.

Hanoi's essential show is water puppetry by Hoan Kiem Lake, short and charming. The Opera House programme is irregular, so ca tru evenings in Old Quarter communal houses are the more unusual find.

Neither city is restful, and in both the way to unwind is massage. Hanoi's foot and body massage shops are cheap enough to visit after every long day, and early mornings by West Lake are the calmest part of the day.

Hong Kong has more polished hotel spas and a living tradition of Chinese medicine. For real quiet, though, you have to go further: to Chi Lin Nunnery or to the car-free lanes of Lamma.