Hanoi, a working old city

What Hanoi actually is

Hanoi is a city of about eight million people with a medieval commercial district at the middle of it that is still commercial. The thirty-six streets of the Old Quarter were organised by guild — one for tin, one for silk, one for votive paper, one for gravestones — and most of them still sell roughly what they always sold. Hang Thiec still sells sheet metal. Hang Ma still sells paper goods for funerals. This is the thing that distinguishes it from every other preserved old town in the region: it was never preserved, it just kept working.

That also means it is loud, crowded, and difficult to cross the road in. Around two and a half million motorbikes move through this city daily and none of them will stop for you. The technique is to walk at a constant speed and let them go round you, which everyone finds impossible for two days and obvious on the third.

The second layer is French: sixty years of colonial administration left an entire quarter of villas, boulevards and public buildings south-east of the lake, and it is a strikingly complete piece of nineteenth-century urban planning. The third layer is the war years, and it is thinner than visitors expect — Hanoi was bombed but not flattened, and the city does not present itself as a war site.

How many nights, and why fewer does not work

Two nights is one full day, which covers the Old Quarter, the Temple of Literature and the French quarter at a fast walk. Three nights is two days, which adds the Ethnology Museum in the western suburbs — the best museum in the country and the one almost no itinerary includes — and an evening that is not spent recovering.

One night does not work. You will arrive tired from a long-haul flight, sleep badly, and spend the single day you have adjusting to a city that takes a day to adjust to. Every itinerary we build puts a deliberately empty arrival day in Hanoi for exactly this reason.

If you are going on to Ha Giang or Lan Ha Bay, Hanoi is also your staging post, and both of those transfers start early. Plan the night before either of them as a genuine night, not a half-night.

When to go

The main thing people get wrong is packing for a tropical city in February. Northern Vietnam has a genuine winter and the buildings have no heating.

How to get there

Noi Bai International is 35 kilometres north, on the far side of the Red River. The transfer takes 45 minutes at night and up to 80 in the morning peak. There is no rail link and the airport bus is slow.

Onward: the north–south railway runs from Hanoi to Hue in about thirteen hours overnight, and to Ho Chi Minh City in thirty-two, which almost nobody should do. Domestic flights to Hue, Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City run all day and are cheap. Ha Giang is six hours by road; Lan Ha Bay is two and a half.

Internationally, Hanoi connects directly to Luang Prabang, Vientiane, Bangkok, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. The Luang Prabang route is thin — a handful of departures a week — and the fare roughly doubles inside four weeks, so book it early.

What things cost

Photographs

When to skip Hanoi

• If you have under ten days in Vietnam and the coast is what you came for, Hanoi can be a single arrival night and you fly on. It is not a place that rewards being rushed.
• If you cannot walk far in heat and humidity. Hanoi is a walking city and taxis are slow in the Old Quarter because the streets are narrow.
• If you are travelling in July or August and heat is a problem for you. The city does not offer much shelter from it.
• If noise keeps you awake. Even a good hotel in the Old Quarter is on a street that starts at 05:30.

Tours that include Hanoi

Hanoi is the start of most of our northern routes: the eighteen-day Indochina classic, the twenty-four-day four-country route, the fourteen-day Vietnam route, the Vietnam and Laos overland crossing and the ten-day express.

All five give it two or three nights at the start, with an arrival day that has nothing in it.

Questions travellers ask most

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