The Old Quarter in Hanoi, Vietnam

Hanoi street scene

I arrived in Hanoi by train from China, and watching from the windows, I found Vietnam to be wild and unkempt, with reddish orange dirt, dark green vegetation, and a trace of brown everywhere. Vietnam is tropical, and tropical places always have that overgrown feel – a bit wild, a bit less minded by a human hand.

And, in the same vein, tropical places have a certain sort of savage spirit – Vietnam certainly has this. I was there in July, one of the wettest and hottest months of the year. My train pulled into the station, and even in the early hours of the morning, the city was draped in humid heat and abuzz with life.

While the country’s other metropolis, Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), is said to have a more American flavor, Hanoi is described as a city with quaint European flair, with its wide leafy boulevards and narrow alleyways, urban lakes and parks, cheery yellow storefronts trimmed with green, and curly wroughtiron balconies – all reminders of the French Colonial days. Even so, there’s no getting around the general aesthetic of Southeast Asia: corrugated metal constructions, striped plastic tarps, plastic stools, and buildings stained with black mold and green swaths of lichen.

Hanoi music shop

My guesthouse, a timeworn affair with massive bundles of power lines strung across the balcony, was located in the Old Quarter, a neighborhood with more than 1000 years of history imbued in its structures, and a warren of backstreets, each of them devoted to the sale of a specific type of merchandise: the streets are lined with shops selling only towels for blocks upon blocks, or funerary plaques, and anything else one could imagine.

Hanoi snake liquor

Women in conical hats and colorful PJs sell fruit from baskets that hang from their shoulders; gregarious men on trishaws quietly sidle up next to you, proposing a ride to the Hanoi Hilton, Uncle Ho’s mausoleum, or to ‘eat snake – make you strong’. A walk through the neighborhood reveals curbside noodle stands next door to 3-star restaurants; and mysterious Vietnamese delights, such as snakes and reptilian battle scenes placed in bottles of liquor, or coffee beans that have been fed to weasels and then removed from their feces.

The Old Quarter has that small-town atmosphere where you feel you should know your neighbor, perhaps due to the casual dress and languid posture of the locals, the children playing badminton and football in the streets, and the women burning incense and funeral money out in the open. In the afternoon, at the Hoam Kiem Lake, students look for people with whom to practice English, lovers stroll, people relax and picnic under the shade of trees – a scene not unlike Seurat’s painting ‘Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’, but a different time, and certainly, a different place.

At night, when the heat is insufferable indoors, women pull chairs into the alleyways to talk while they fan themselves, and men hang out on the stoops, laughing with the company of their friends.

Hanoi Army Museum

But there is more to Hanoi than the Old Quarter – make sure you visit the city’s relics from its war torn past: the Hao Lo Prison (aka the Hanoi Hilton), with displays of torture instruments, shackled mannequins, and even a guillotine; the Army Museum, which showcases Soviet, Chinese, French, and American weapons, along with scale models of famous battles, and a strangely artistic outdoor display of war refuse, made of spent missiles and the wreckage of airplanes and tanks. Hanoi’s famous hexagonal Flag Tower rises above it all, with Vietnam’s bright red flag fluttering at the top.

For peace, quiet, and a restful atmosphere, visit the Temple of Literature, dedicated to Confucius in 1070 and today an exceptional example of traditional Vietnamese architecture. And no stay in Hanoi is complete without a glimpse of the country’s beloved Hero, Ho Chi Minh – his embalmed body is on display in a glass sarcophagus at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.

Flag tower, Hanoi

Many people spend only a few days in Hanoi, using the city as a base from which to explore a few of northern Vietnam’s other highlights, Halong Bay and Sapa. Spend some time in one of Hanoi’s hip, kick-back venues, like the Polite Pub or on the rooftop terrace at Highway 4, to meet other travelers.

–Cheryn Flanagan

Read Viator’s other blog posts about Vietnam, or browse our complete list of things to do in Vietnam, tours in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. There are photos of Vietnam over on the Viator flickr page. Also check out the New Hanoian website for local events, news and other happenings in Hanoi.