What a free walking tour with us actually is
Hanoi Free Walking Tours started in late 2012 when a handful of university students decided the fastest way to improve their English was to spend a morning showing visitors around their own city. Fourteen years later the idea has not changed. Our guides are still students, they still volunteer their time, and the walk is still free.
What you get is not a scripted city tour. You get a young Hanoian who will tell you which noodle stall their family goes to, why the pavement is full of plastic stools at six in the evening, and what it is like to grow up in a city of eight million motorbikes. Most of our guests say afterwards that it felt less like a tour and more like a day out with a local friend.
Choose a walk
Seven routes, all starting from your hotel in or near the Old Quarter. Half-day walks run at 9:00 AM or 2:00 PM; food walks start in the early evening.
Why travellers keep choosing a student club over an agency
- Fourteen years of running free tours in Hanoi, with thousands of walks completed every year.
- Around 700 reviews on Tripadvisor, roughly nine in ten of them five stars.
- Guides are recruited two or three times a year and trained before they ever lead a walk.
- Sister club in Ho Chi Minh City, so you can do the same thing in the south.
- Booking is a form, not an account — no deposit, no card, no voucher.
- Free, but organised: confirmed pick-up time, confirmed meeting point, a named guide.
How booking works
- Pick a walk and send the form with your date, your hotel and how many of you there are.
- We reply by email with a guide's name and a pick-up time, usually within a day.
- Your guide meets you in your hotel lobby at the agreed time.
- If your plans change, tell us at least three hours before departure.