How We Train Our Hanoi Tour Guides

A free guide raises a fair question: has anyone checked that they know what they are talking about? This page is the long answer. Most members train for three months before they are allowed to lead anyone; the rest prove the same standard in an interview. Either way, nobody takes a group out alone until they have shadowed real tours.

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members of Hanoi Free Private Tour Guide in a free tour
  • 3 MonthsThe standard training route
  • Level 6The level a guide must reach
  • FreeTo join the club, and to stay in it
  • 2,000+Active guides

Who is allowed to lead a tour?

There are three ways into the club. One is free and hard. The other two take three months and cost the member money, because they run through a language centre. The standard at the end is the same on all three.

Pass the interview

For members who already speak confident English and already know Hanoi: its history, its customs, how the city is run, and the sites themselves. They sit an interview, and if they pass they join. They pay nothing, at any stage. This is the smallest of the three groups.

Take the tour guide course

For members whose English is good but who are not yet secure on history, religion, politics or the sites. They take the tour guide course, level 6, and have to meet its exit standard. The course is paid.

Start with the English course

For members who want to speak more confidently before anything else. They begin at the communication levels, 0 to 5, and work up to level 6. The longest route in, and also paid.

Nobody buys their way in. A member who pays for a course still has to meet the standard at the end of it, and a member who meets the standard already pays nothing. What the money buys is the catching up, not the place.

What happens in the three months?

Two and a half months, two subjects at once. English on one side, and the history and culture behind each site on the other – because a guide who can speak but cannot explain the Temple of Literature is no use to you, and neither is the reverse.

  1. English, every week. Not grammar drills for an exam. The kind of English you need to answer a question you did not expect, from someone who has been in the country three days.
  2. The history behind each stop. Why the Old Quarter has 36 streets named after trades. What happened at Hoa Lo. Who Ly Thai To was. Members learn their own city properly, often for the first time.
  3. Rehearsal with senior members. New members practise on people who have led hundreds of tours and who will tell them, plainly, when an explanation is not clear enough.
  4. Shadowing real tours. They walk with a working guide and a real traveller, and they watch how a four-hour day is actually held together.
  5. The first tour led alone. Only after all of the above. By then a member has spent three months on it.
Members of the Hanoi Free Private Tour Guide club at a group event in Hanoi

What three months does not do

It does not produce a professional historian, and we would rather say so here than let you find out on the day. What it produces is a young Hanoian who can walk you round their own city in English, who has read up on the stops you chose, and who will say “I don’t know, let me find out” instead of inventing a date.

Who else trains them?

For two of our tours, the training does not come from us at all. It comes from the institution whose collection the guide is about to explain.

The Ho Chi Minh Museum, since 2018

The museum’s own education team selects and trains a dedicated group of our volunteer guides on President Ho Chi Minh’s life and on the permanent exhibitions. It was the first volunteer English-guide model of its kind in Vietnam, and it has run every year since.

The Vietnam Women’s Museum, since 2026

Under an agreement signed on 29 September 2026, our members receive specialist training directly from the museum’s education team before working in its halls as English-speaking interpreters.

Both are listed in full on our Partners & Collaborations page, along with the craft workshops and heritage bodies our guides work alongside. You meet this training on the Hanoi Museum Tour and the War Sites Tour.

Who pays for what?

A tour that costs you nothing is a reasonable thing to be suspicious about. So here is every direction money moves, including the one most clubs would leave off the page.

What your tour costs
Nothing. Tips optional, cancellation free

What it costs to join the club
Nothing. Membership is free and stays free

What a course costs a member
Paid by the member to the language centre

Who runs the courses
EFIS English, a language centre at 158 Chua Lang

What the club takes from venues
Nothing, from any shop, restaurant or partner

What a guide earns from your tour
Nothing. No wage, no commission

Joining the club is free and stays free. No member pays a fee to be in it, and no member is paid to guide. What is not free is catching up. A member who applies without the English or the knowledge takes a course at EFIS English – a Vietnamese language centre at 158 Chua Lang, the same address as the club’s office – and pays that centre for it, the same as any other student there. A member who already meets the standard sits the interview, passes, and pays nothing at any point.

We would rather write that down here than have you find it somewhere else. It changes nothing about what your tour costs, which is nothing, and nothing about who your guide answers to on the day, which is you.

It is also the reason every tour is in English and only in English. Our members join to practise the language with you. If that exchange stopped, the free tour would have no reason to exist.

More on the language centre

EFIS English started this club in 2015 so that its learners would have somewhere real to use their English. Who it is, what it teaches and why it set up a free tour club is written in English on who runs Hanoi Free Private Tour Guide. If you are a young Hanoian who wants to join us, the joining page is in Vietnamese: Tham gia dẫn tour.

What should you expect on the day?

Training explains what your guide can do. This is the part that is fair to say about what they cannot.

English is their second language

Fluent enough for four to eight hours of conversation, and sometimes slower than a native speaker on a technical word. Most guests tell us this stops mattering within the first half hour.

They may be younger than you expect

Most of our guides are students at school or university. The rest are recent graduates and young professionals. Every one of them grew up in Hanoi.

They will say when they do not know

It is trained behaviour, not a failure. Ask something outside the stops you chose and you may get “I don’t know” followed by a message that evening with the answer.

They prepare around your stops

Your guide reads up on the places you picked before the day, and messages you on WhatsApp to agree the plan. A guide who has not been to a site before goes there first.

Questions about our guides

FAQs - How we train our Hanoi tour guides

They are trained volunteers, not licensed professional tour guides, and we would rather you knew that before booking than after. Most members complete three months of training in English and in Vietnamese history and culture; those who already meet that standard prove it in an interview instead. Either way, every one of them rehearses with senior members and shadows real tours before leading a group alone. For our museum tours, the museums’ own education teams train them on top of that.
Three months, which is two and a half months, on the usual route. English and the history behind each site are taught at the same time, followed by rehearsal with senior members and shadowing on real tours. A smaller number of members arrive already at that standard and prove it in an interview instead.
No. Nobody in the club earns a wage, and no guide takes a commission from a shop, a restaurant or a partner venue. Members join to practise English with visitors. Tips are optional and nothing about the day changes if you leave none.
Membership of the club is free. What some of them pay for is the course that gets them ready: a member who applies without enough English or enough knowledge of the city studies at EFIS English, a language centre at the same address as our office, and pays that centre like any other student. A member who passes the interview straight away pays nothing. Either way, no money reaches the club and no money changes the standard a guide has to meet.
Most of them are, at school or university. Others graduated years ago and kept coming back, and some fit tours around a full-time job in the city. What they share is that they grew up in Hanoi.
You get “I don’t know, let me find out”. Guides are trained to say so rather than invent an answer, and many follow up by message afterwards once they have checked.
Tell us when you book which tour you want and we match you with a member who is prepared for it. Your guide then messages you on WhatsApp before the day to agree the stops.
The club exists so that young Hanoians can practise English with visitors, so members are recruited locally and the joining pages are in Vietnamese. If you would like to spend time with our members rather than guide, the Cultural Exchange is built for exactly that.

More about the club

Who runs the club

EFIS English, the language centre that started the club in 2015, and why a school set up a free tour club in the first place.

Our Mission

What the club promises travellers and what it promises the young Hanoians who volunteer, and the two words that have been on the wall since 2015.

Reviews

What 5,400 guests wrote after their tour. The clearest test of whether three months of training is enough.

Partners & Collaborations

The museums and craft workshops that train our guides directly, from the Ho Chi Minh Museum to the Vietnam Women’s Museum.

Our History

How a student who could not introduce his own city started a club in December 2015.

Media & Press

Coverage of the club and of the young people who volunteer for it.

Contact us

The office at 158 Chua Lang, how to reach us, and how long we take to reply.

Meet one of them

Tell us your dates and what you would like to see, and we will match you with a guide who has prepared for it. Free to cancel if your plans change.

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