Hanoi

Hanoi is a river city on the Red River delta, and the coast is too far for a beach day. The closest sea is around the Ha Long and Cat Ba area or the resort strand at Sam Son, both a long journey away and better treated as a separate stay. In the city itself, swimming means a hotel pool or one of the large water parks on the edge of West Lake. If beaches are part of your plan, book a few nights on the coast or fly south.

Eating in Hanoi happens mostly on low plastic stools, at stalls and family-run shopfronts that often cook one dish and have done for decades. This is the home of pho, eaten as a clear, quiet beef broth at breakfast, and of bun cha, grilled pork with rice noodles and herbs at lunchtime. Around the Old Quarter you also find banh cuon steamed rice rolls, cha ca turmeric fish fried at the table, and snails, sticky rice and sweet soups sold from street corners.

Drinking has its own rituals. Coffee is strong and slow-dripped, served iced with condensed milk or whipped with egg yolk into a thick, sweet egg coffee, in cafés tucked up narrow stairs overlooking the lakes. In the early evening the bia hoi corners fill with people drinking fresh, light draught beer. The markets, Dong Xuan above all, show the raw ingredients. A layer of upscale Vietnamese and French-influenced restaurants exists, but the street is where Hanoi is best.

Hanoi's heritage is layered rather than monumental. The Old Quarter keeps its tangle of streets once named for the guild trades, with tube houses, small temples and communal houses squeezed between shops. Around Hoan Kiem Lake stand the Ngoc Son temple on its islet, and south of it the French Quarter's wide boulevards, colonial villas and the Opera House. The Temple of Literature, the country's first university, is the most serene sight in the city.

Further west lies the political Hanoi: the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum on Ba Dinh Square, the One Pillar Pagoda and the excavated Imperial Citadel of Thang Long. The Museum of Ethnology, with full-size village houses in its grounds, is the best museum, and Hoa Lo prison and the Women's Museum tell the twentieth century well. It is a rewarding three or four days, though few single sights stop you in your tracks.

Hanoi's nights start early and outdoors. From late afternoon, pavements across the Old Quarter fill with people drinking bia hoi on tiny stools, and around Ta Hien and the streets nearby, backpacker bars and beer joints spill into the lanes and get loud and crowded by nine. At weekends the streets around Hoan Kiem close to traffic and become a long evening promenade.

There are cocktail bars, rooftop terraces and a West Lake expat scene with craft beer, but the city is not a late one. Official closing hours are taken fairly seriously, and most places go quiet around midnight, with only a few bars carrying on behind half-closed shutters. Good for a sociable evening, less so for clubbing until dawn.

The city itself is flat and built-up, softened by its lakes. West Lake has a long shoreline path for walking or cycling, and Hoan Kiem's early morning crowd of joggers and tai chi groups is part of Hanoi's daily rhythm. The parks are small and the air is often heavy.

The best landscapes need an early start. Around Ninh Binh, about two hours south, limestone towers rise out of rice paddies, and you can be rowed through caves on the rivers of Trang An and Tam Coc or cycle the lanes between them. The Ba Vi hills to the west offer forest walking. Ha Long Bay and the mountain country around Sapa are the famous scenery of the north, but both are long journeys, best done with a night away.

The classic day out is Ninh Binh, where the ancient capital of Hoa Lu keeps temples to its early kings and the vast Bai Dinh pagoda complex sits on a hillside nearby. The Perfume Pagoda, reached by a rowing boat along a river and then up into a cave shrine, draws huge pilgrim crowds in the spring festival season.

Closer in, the countryside around Hanoi is dotted with craft villages: Bat Trang for ceramics, Van Phuc for silk, and others for lacquer and conical hats. Duong Lam is an old village of laterite-walled houses about an hour west, and the But Thap and Tay Phuong pagodas hold some of the finest old wooden sculpture in the country. Ha Long Bay is the trip everyone asks about, but it is a long day, and an overnight cruise works better.

Vietnamese culture is very fond of children, and young visitors are fussed over everywhere. The water puppet theatre by Hoan Kiem Lake is short and entertaining for all ages, the lakes are pleasant for a stroll, and there is a city zoo, the outdoor village houses at the Museum of Ethnology and water parks on the edge of town.

The hard part is the street. Motorbikes fill the roads, pavements are taken over by parked scooters and cooking stalls, and crossing a road with a pushchair takes nerve. Summers are hot and humid. Families tend to manage best with a hotel near the lake, short outings and a car with a driver for anything further.

The main sights sit fairly close together, between the Old Quarter, Hoan Kiem Lake, the French Quarter and Ba Dinh, so much of a visit can be done on foot. Walking is still tiring: pavements are used for parking and cooking, so you often step into the road, and the river of motorbikes takes time to get used to. The trick is to cross slowly and steadily so riders can flow around you.

The urban rail lines serve few of the places visitors go, and city buses are hard to use without Vietnamese. Most travellers rely on ride-hailing cars and motorbike taxis, which are cheap and easy, or on cyclo rides around the Old Quarter. Day trips are done by tour minibus or hired car.

Shopping in Hanoi happens mostly at street level, and each street has its own trade. The Old Quarter still groups trades by street, so you find whole rows of shops selling silk, tin boxes, bamboo, paper votive goods or headstones. Hang Gai and the streets around it are the place for silk, embroidery and made-to-measure clothes, often ready in a day or two. Dong Xuan is the big covered wholesale market. On weekend evenings a night market of stalls fills Hang Dao, Hang Ngang and Hang Duong, running from near Hoan Kiem Lake up to the market.

Good buys are lacquerware, ceramics from Bat Trang, ethnic textiles from the northern hills and coffee. Malls carry international brands, but there is no real luxury street, and many shops around the lake sell the same souvenirs and copies.

Hanoi is about as cheap as a capital city gets. A bowl of pho or bun cha at a street stall, a glass of bia hoi and a coffee cost very little, and you can eat well three times a day for a small fraction of what Western cities charge. Comfortable boutique hotels in the Old Quarter are inexpensive, ride-hailing makes getting around almost negligible, and museums and temples charge modest entry fees.

The costs that add up are the extras: international hotel chains, upscale restaurants, imported wine, and Ha Long Bay cruises, which span a wide range. For most travellers, though, money stretches a very long way here.

The performance every visitor sees is water puppetry, a centuries-old village art staged on a pool of water with live traditional music, playing several times a day beside Hoan Kiem Lake. It is short, charming and very Vietnamese.

Beyond that, the French colonial Opera House hosts the national symphony orchestra, ballet and opera, though the programme is irregular. Ca tru, the intimate sung poetry of the north, is performed in a few Old Quarter communal houses on set evenings, and there is a small, long-running jazz scene. A rewarding evening or two, but not a city to plan around for its stages.

Massage is the main way to unwind in Hanoi. Foot massage and full-body treatment shops line the streets of the Old Quarter, from simple places with reclining chairs to calm spas with herbal baths, and they are inexpensive enough to make a habit of after long days on foot. Hotel spas add more polished treatments.

The city itself is not restful. Horns, traffic and crowds fill most of the day. For a slower pace, stay near West Lake, where lakeside cafés and quieter lanes give some calm, or go to the lakes at dawn, when the city exercises in the cool before the motorbikes take over.