Vietnam's best hotel bars

Vietnam's holiday resorts offer plenty of great places to relax over a drink. Illustration / Rod Emmerson

Go underground in the steps of Joan Baez.

When it comes to sipping a cocktail, savouring a liqueur or knocking back a cold one in a decadent setting, Vietnam's holiday resorts offer plenty. Here's a pick of the country's best hotel bars.

Bamboo Bar
Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi, 15 Ngo Quyen St, Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi

If you get bombed here, never fear - there's an air-raid shelter just below. Joan Baez sought refuge inside it during the Christmas bombings in 1972 and recorded part of her album Where Are You Now, My Son in the subterranean warren.

Excavated in 2012 and opened to guests as a memorial, the shelter opens every day at happy hour. The Bamboo Bar is a popular social hub of one of South Asia's grand dames, built in 1901 and so well refurbished in 2011 that magazines hailed it one of the world's most stunning debuts.

You can enjoy a range of cocktails, including the signature Graham Greene Martini, light snacks, gourmet icecreams and coffee.

Saigon Saigon Bar
Caravelle Hotel, 19-23 Lam Son Square, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City

From the rooftop bar of the Caravelle Hotel, Vietnam War correspondents and other spectators routinely watched Air Force jets streak over enemy strongholds, dribbling bombs that burst like pyrotechnic displays on the outskirts of Saigon.

These days the 10th-floor bar at the Caravelle endures as the most compelling perch in the city, although the panoramic attractions now feature a melange of LED billboards, construction cranes and skyscrapers as Ho Chi Minh City gussies up as one of Southeast Asia's most dynamic destinations.

Saigon Saigon has a two-for-one happy hour from 4pm to 8pm daily.

Emeraude

This bar on world-renowned Halong Bay is mobile. On the sundeck of a replica colonial-era paddle-wheeler, the Emeraude cruises past one of the world's most compelling seascapes. Limestone karst towers up from emerald green waters in one of the world's most fantastic displays of geology. Legends say it was an outraged dragon, thrashing with its tail, that formed the land this way.

The Bar
Nam Hai Hotel, Hamlet 1, Hoi An

This watering hole at The Nam Hai was tweaked recently to improve the terrace, which now features a glass roof and operable windows so that, rain or shine, guests can enjoy a wine or a cocktail while taking in the East Sea.

Le Gouverneur
La Residence Hotel and Spa, 5 Le Loi Street, Hue

In the lobby bar of the 1930-built La Residence Hotel and Spa in the former Imperial City of Hue, the Arc of Life mural curves with the rotunda wall depicting scenes of Vietnamese daily life.

Inspired by frescoes on the walls of the Musee des Colonies in Paris and the main post office in Lyon, this one-of-a-kind mural was created by French artist Roland Renaud. It was through these doors at Tet in 1968 that Viet Cong cadres infiltrated the hotel and made off with the highest ranking South Vietnamese official abducted during the war.

If that isn't enough, the bar's stocked with first-rate spirits and Cuban cigars.

CHECKLIST

Getting there: Cathay Pacific offers airfares with daily connections to Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Da Nang.

- AAP