Hanoi vs Da Nang: Where Should You Play Golf in Vietnam?

Last updated: September 2026

We book trips in both cities every week, and the honest answer is that neither wins outright. Da Nang gives you coastline and short drives; Hanoi gives you twelve courses, cheaper weekdays and a capital city attached. The question is which trade-off suits you.

How do the two destinations compare on paper?

Every number below comes from our own course and pricing pages rather than a brochure. Read the drive-time and season rows first; they decide more trips than the course list does.

Figures from our Da Nang green fee list and Hanoi cost guide. Green fees vary by season and tee time.

What do the courses actually feel like?

This is where the two regions genuinely diverge, and it is not a quality gap.

Da Nang is a coastal collection. Hoiana Shores and the BRG Da Nang layouts are links-style golf on sand, with sea wind as the main defence, while Ba Na Hills sits inland at the foot of the mountains for the one round that does not smell of salt. If your mental image of a golf holiday involves finishing a round and walking onto a beach, that image is Da Nang. Our take on how the coastal courses rank against each other goes course by course.

Hanoi is a lake-and-valley collection. BRG Kings Island spreads 54 holes across a peninsula in Dong Mo Lake, Sky Lake runs 36 holes with a course past 7,500 yards from the tips, Thanh Lanh Valley is a Nick Faldo design that only opened in 2021, and Van Tri is a genuine private club with roughly 400 members that visitors reach through an operator rather than a booking form. Nobody arrives in Hanoi for the beach, and the golf does not pretend otherwise.

Which one puts you closer to the tee?

Da Nang, comfortably, and this is the single biggest practical difference between them.

In Da Nang almost every course sits 20 to 45 minutes from a central hotel, so a 7am pickup still means an early lunch afterwards. In Hanoi the spread runs from 20 minutes to Long Bien inside the city out to 90 minutes for Phoenix in Hoa Binh, with Kings Island at 45 to 60 minutes and Sky Lake at about an hour. Nothing there is far by international standards; the catch is that the courses sit in an arc rather than a line, so a badly routed four-round Hanoi trip can put you in the car for close to 11 hours.

GoGolfVietnam plans Hanoi itineraries from a drive-time grid for exactly that reason, clustering the far courses on consecutive days. In Da Nang that planning barely matters. That is a real advantage, and it is worth more to some golfers than four extra courses.

Where does your money go further?

Hanoi, if you can travel midweek. A round at the benchmark Hanoi course runs about 1,850,000 VND on a weekday and roughly 3,200,000 VND at the weekend, and that figure normally includes caddie and buggy, which is unusual in Asia. The gap is close to double, so a Tuesday-to-Friday Hanoi trip saves enough across four rounds to pay for roughly two more of them.

Da Nang prices in a different shape. Hoiana Shores runs USD 220–300 on weekdays and USD 250–320 at weekends; Montgomerie Links sits at USD 120–180 weekday; Vinpearl Golf Nam Hoi An opens at USD 90–160. The weekday-to-weekend jump is much softer than Hanoi’s, so a Da Nang trip that has to include a Saturday is punished far less. The honest summary: Hanoi rewards flexibility, Da Nang tolerates a fixed calendar. If the coast is where you are leaning, what a coastal itinerary costs once the rounds are bundled is the quicker way to compare than adding up green fees one course at a time.

Which has the better weather when you can actually travel?

Neither is good year round, and the two are close to opposites.

Da Nang’s dependable stretch runs from about February to May, staying dry into August, with heat peaking in May and June. September to November is the wettest period on the central coast. Hanoi has four real seasons: February to April and September to November are the comfortable windows, while December and January turn cold and morning fog over the lakes can hold first tee times by 30 to 90 minutes, which is why we book 9 or 10am starts through winter there.

Say that plainly, because it decides a lot of trips: September to November is Hanoi’s best autumn and Da Nang’s wettest stretch. Golfers whose only free window falls in October are better served in the north, and it is the one month where we push back on people who have already decided on Da Nang.

What does the non-golfer in your group do?

Both cities handle this well, in opposite ways.

Da Nang is the easy one: a long city beach, Hoi An’s lantern-lit old town about 40 minutes south, the Marble Mountains, resort pools. A partner can fill a week without leaving a five-kilometre radius, and the golf slots into the morning.

Hanoi asks more and gives more. The Old Quarter, the Temple of Literature, the water puppet theatre and a genuinely serious food scene fill days that have nothing to do with golf, and Ha Long Bay sits within day-trip or overnight reach for anyone who wants it. Our own experience is that mixed groups come back happier from Hanoi and less tired from Da Nang, which is a fair summary of the whole comparison.

Can you just do both?

Yes, and more people should. Direct flights between Hanoi and Da Nang take roughly 1 hour 5 minutes to 1 hour 25 minutes and are operated by half a dozen carriers, so the internal leg costs you half a day at most.

The frame that works is 10 days to two weeks: four or five nights in one city, a midday flight, then four or five nights in the other. Which comes first depends on your dates rather than preference, since October leans north and April leans either way. Before splitting a trip, it is worth knowing what the northern half of the country actually offers, because most first-time visitors have only ever been sold the coast.

Below ten days our advice is the opposite, and we give it often enough that it is worth stating plainly: stay in one region. A shorter trip split in two pays for a domestic flight, two hotel check-ins and two half-days of travel, and buys nothing the golf could not already give you. Both regions have more courses than a week can hold, so concentrating is not a compromise; it is the version where you actually relax.

Then come back for the other one. Golfers who spend a week on the coast and return for the north a year later end up seeing both properly, and the second trip is better for knowing what the first one was like. Two focused trips beat one that spends its middle day in an airport.

So which one is right for you?

Five profiles, drawn from trips we actually run.

First Vietnam golf trip, four to five days: Da Nang. Short drives, coastal courses, beach afternoons and a simple answer to “what did you think of Vietnam”.

Second or third visit: Hanoi. You have played the coast; twelve courses including a Faldo design and a private club is the reason to come back. A five-day northern itinerary built around four different layouts is where most repeat visitors land.

Travelling with non-golfers: Hanoi if they like cities and history, Da Nang if they want a beach and a pool. This one is genuinely about them, not you.

Fixed dates in October or November: Hanoi. Da Nang in the wet season is a gamble you do not need to take.

Budget-conscious group with flexible dates: Hanoi, midweek. The weekday rate plus included caddie and buggy is the best value combination in the country, and it is what the northern itineraries priced around weekday tee sheets are built on.

GoGolfVietnam runs trips in both regions, so we have no incentive to sell you the wrong one. Tell us your dates first: in this comparison the calendar decides more often than the courses do.

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GoGolfVietnam is a Vietnam-based golf tour operator arranging tee times, transfers and hotels in both Hanoi and Da Nang, including combined north-and-central itineraries.