Before Halong and Sapa, we arrived in Hanoi. Instead of arriving in the afternoon as scheduled, we arrived at the hotel around midnight, Bamboo Airways wanted it that way. It left us with only one drink at the hotel's sky bar, no dinner.
Our hotel "Scent Premium" is located between Hoan Kiem Lake and the Old Quarter. When arrived, it smells of flowers in the lobby. Due to their name, we discussed earlier that in Vietnam, room fragrance is hardly used. Unfortunately, it is also not lasting at the hotel. Best of the hotel is their attentive staff, rooms and furnishing are the worst we had so far.
During our stay, we just moved around within one of 30 districts: Hoan Kiem District. In the middle the small Hoan Kiem Lake which provide structure to the chaos, Old Quarter in the north and west of it with the neighboring French quarter in the South.
The Old Quarter is the soul of the city and it's history dated back to the 11th century. It is one square kilometres in size and consists of 73 streets. Soon after the independence from China, migrants came here and work joinly on their crafts. People having same skills collaborate in guilds from which the 36 guild streets emerge. Some of them like silk and jewelry still exist. Funny is that people have tranported the guild streets idea to the modern times. We saw streets selling glasses, household goods, lamps, flowers, zippers, mannequin dolls uniformly in separate streets. Our hotel's receptionist told us that the hotel is located on the former salad street.
I immediately like the bustling old town, even though it did not make our lives easy with rain and the dirty water by the dirty streets. I had to wash my sneakers using the water nozzle, a effective substitute tool for toilet brush in Vietnam, regularly and dry them hours using the hair dryer.
Nonetheless, I like the confusion on the streets where one can simply get lost wandering around. You will never find a store again which you have discovered therefore purchase decisions have to be made extremely spontaneously.
Not only for transport purposes, bikes are also used as selling points. Retail is so diverse, here:
The French Quarter is a business district today and have wider streets, more skyscrapers and actually more European feeling. The oldest historical grandhotel Sofitel Legend Métropole is located here, too. Obviously, it is also a more luxurious district where some of the luxury brands have their locations. But, here in Vietnam where everyone wear fake brands from head to toe, who want to be the minority buying the real thing. I have never seen so many Dior Book Totes at other places.
St. Joseph's Cathedral, modeled after Notre-Dame (all main churches in Vietnam's cities feel like modeled after Notre-Dame) looks fake to me with these plastered concrete panels, a bit strange. Look for yourself.
However, around the church, we found some hip bars and shops. Especially to be highlighted is the "Pasteur Street Craft Beer" bar, even that I hardly drink beer. They produce their own beer in Ho Chi Ming City.
What we did not do here was eating streetfood. We did have too much fear after seeing the "kitchens". Instead, we found two very good restaurants. "Blue Butterfly" is vietnamese with Chinese influence. They offer also a cooking school.
And "Duong" is also Vietnamese, but with western influence. Both were very very good.
Noteworthy is the Café "Note Coffee" which ranks no. 4 of the most instagrammable café of the world. They provide post-its and pens for everybody to make notes and stick them on the wall.
Botton line is that we most probably saw and learned only a tiny aspect of Hanoi so we have to, want to come back.
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