We didn’t plan it especially for this reason but our tour of Vietnam includes four cities beginning with H: Ho Chi Minh City, Hoi An, Hué and our final stop, Hanoi. We also planned three UNESCO sites, Hoi An Ancient Town, the Citadel in Hué and our last intended site, Ha Long Bay, which isn’t really near Hanoi but that’s how you get there.
After the dead heat of Hué I was glad to be going further north and hoping to find cooler temps. We did, but we also got our first cloudy weather, and eventually, rain. We had pushed the calendar a little and were on the cusp of rainy season so we weren’t surprised at that, and really, in a big city, rain is rarely a deterrent to activity.
We settled into our hotel by mid afternoon, giving us plenty of time to reconnoiter the neighborhood. Right away we noticed that the shops are largely organized like a giant department store, with one street mostly hardware stores, one street baby clothes, several streets toys, etc. Our hotel was in Notions department with separate shops selling buttons, zippers, fasteners, beads and so on. If my feet would hold out I’d have walked the streets for days just to discover the categories.
The scary Vietnamese telecom system is on full view in Hanoi and apparently kept in good nick.
We decided Hanoi is even more chaotic than Saigon but we enjoyed navigating the crazy traffic and crowded streets, appreciating the architecture and the way the city seems to be held together by sheer determination and a little luck.
Our hotel concierge tipped us on the night market happening around the corner on the evening of our arrival so we joined the fray and negotiated the crush of humanity for about an hour and a half before taking refuge in a quiet restaurant for dinner. The food would surely have been better out in the market but we needed real chairs to sit in, and a bit of air conditioning.