Hanoi
12/15/2025 - 12/29/2025
Following the Lan Ha Bay cruise, we were driven inland a few hours to Hanoi. Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam with a population of 9,000,000 people and 7,000,000 scooters (which makes the air quality terrible!)! It is intense! And frankly a little gross in places. But there are also some really nice areas – it’s a bit of everything. The people are really nice, and it is super safe (except trying to cross the streets) and there is so much interesting history. Hanoi is our final stop in northern Vietnam. We are here for 2 weeks before heading to central Vietnam.
Our first morning we did a walking tour to get the lay of the land and see the old quarter. It’s interesting and poor and dirty. The conditions many people live in are pretty unbelievable. The streets and markets are kind of cool (except the gross ones with the dead animals). They have streets designated to different themes. A street that sells nothing but decorations (Christmas currently), a street that sells just sweets, a street with all appliances, and, of course, beer street!
We saw several little temples and learned about their ritual of burning things that they think their ancestors need. They believe their ancestors are watching over them and need all the same crap we do, so they make paper replicas of stuff (fake money, paper cell phones, etc.) and burn them so the smoke takes the items up to their ancestors.
We saw one tiny temple that a 90-year-old man actually lives in. He moved in during the 60’s and has never left. His little kitchen and bathroom are outside, and his little room was just a tiny cement room (we didn’t go in – just saw through the window). I didn’t take pictures of him or the interior out of respect, but what I saw looked awful. Grady later told me that from the angle he peeked in the window, he saw a big screen tv… that made me happy!
We did a cooking class which was excellent. We started out in the market (one that thankfully wasn’t too gross) to get some fruits and vegetables before heading to the cooking school space – which was really nice. We made papaya salad, fried spring rolls w/ a dipping sauce, and bun cha. And we ended with egg and coconut coffee. Everything was so yummy!
We did a really interesting history tour where we learned so much about the Resistance War Against the Americans (aka the “Vietnam War”) and the years leading up to it including the Resistance to French Colonization just prior and the resulting movement toward communism in their efforts to resist the French. It was very enlightening. These poor people just wanted self determination and were brutalized by the French for 100 years so they rose up and resisted and eventually got the French out only to have the Americans step in and sort of take their place.
The country was divided after the French left (not by Vietnam’s choosing), and the ruler in the north was Ho Chi Minh. His beliefs were communist and he was a humble, charismatic leader with a huge following. While good intentioned, the regime had its share of problems. First, they killed people who didn’t agree with the government (that little nugget of info wasn’t included in the tour or the museums we visited), but also, they had never run a government and were clueless how to manage a country and build a healthy economy. The people were literally starving to death. Everything was issued by the government (food, clothing, land, furniture, books, etc.) and wasn’t nearly enough to survive on. There wasn’t even currency in the country until 1986! They had to rely on the government for everything. This is why they eat the grossest foods you can imagine – they had to eat pretty much anything they could come up with simply to survive. And that part of their culture still exists.
The tour guide said her grandfather collected one part per month to build a scooter and after three years he was able to assemble a complete scooter. And he was hot shit in the village because he had a fully functioning scooter!!
After a pretty thorough history lesson, we went to the “black market”. And it was exactly what you think of when you hear “black market”. In the 60’s the government built congregate housing for the factory workers. The workers would steal parts and pieces from the factories and sell them on the streets (for food or other stuff since there was no such thing as money at the time). The black market has survived all these years, they now sell a combination of stolen goods and other non stolen crap. Some people still live in the congregate housing units. Each floor had two wings each with 12 units and a shared bathroom and kitchen for the 12 families. Back in the day, tenants would even keep farm animals in the shared bathroom. People are warned not to go into this market, but our tour company had managed to get special permission and we even got to go up into the corridors inside the housing building.
We also saw a monument to the victims of one of the worst bombings of the war. It was the U.S.’s last ditch effort to get their (our?) way in the Paris peace talks. It occurred in 1972 under Nixon and they (we) bombed the shit out of Hanoi for 12 days (also called the Christmas Bombing). About 1600 civilians were killed. The monument is of a mother holding a dead baby with her foot on a bomb. ☹
When asked how the Vietnamese people feel about Americans, we were told that they hold no animosity. They saw the US president as the enemy, not the people. They have some interesting posters blaming Nixon for the Christmas bombing that say “Nixon must pay back blood… Debt! Always remember.
They actually very much welcome US tourism because it helps them A LOT. Among themselves they refer to us as “walking ATM’s”! (pretty accurate).
Of course, no trip to Hanoi would be complete without a visit to the iconic Train Street! Train Street is a unique Old Quarter alley where houses and cafes sit mere inches from an active railway, a colonial relic from 1902. Trains pass through 10 times a day. The cafes have seating right at the edge of the tracks, and then staff scurry around about 10 minutes before the train comes through to move tables and chairs and push patrons back far enough to not get maimed by the oncoming train. It is super close when it goes by! It was pretty stinking cool!
We did a tour to the local village of Quang Phu Cau, which is known for it’s bamboo incense making factories. There are vibrant, colorful incense sticks dried in huge bouquets which are really pretty… but mostly just set up like that for tourist photo ops! So a little gimmicky, but still nice to see, creating stunning photo ops!
The incense tradition dates back to the Ly Dynasty (11th-13th centuries), with over 100 years of modern production. The process for making the incense combines traditional methods (dyeing, drying) with some modern machines for efficiency.
Vietnamese people burn incense as a sacred ritual to connect with the spiritual world, honor ancestors, and communicate prayers to gods and spirits, using the rising smoke as a mystical bridge between the living and the afterlife. The practice is deeply rooted in Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism for blessings, remembrance, and bringing harmony.
After the incense village, we visited Chuong Village, a historic craft village famous for its conical hats, a tradition over 300 years old, with some traditions suggesting roots back to the 8th century. The hats are made by hand – we saw a demonstration on how they select and dry palm leaves, create bamboo frames to form the hats on, and hand weave them.
After learning how they are made, we got to paint one for ourselves. Some of the people at our table made such beautiful hats… ours were PATHETIC! Any 7 year old could have done a better paint job than we did! I wished I had just left mine unpainted, I might have tried to get it home, but with the ratchet paint job, it will be left behind!
Areas of Hanoi are really nice with some super cool rooftop bars. Some had amazing views of the lake and cathedral, some had interesting views of the chaos below. We hit quite a few of them and celebrated Grady’s 65th birthday at one!
We visited the Vietnam Military History Museum which was pretty enlightening. A little one sided – as in they forgot to mention any of the suffering and starvation that occurred in the north, but were all about promoting the education programs, land redistribution to poor people, and military successes. But they were all over describing the atrocities the government in the south committed against the common people. They referred to the administration as the “US puppet regime” (actually kind of an accurate description).
The museum was very interesting, but what was kind of unexpected were the herds of school children who were absolutely fascinated with us! There weren’t a lot of western tourists in the museum, and the kids were approaching us NON STOP to say hello and ask if they could have their picture taken with us. They were so stinking cute!
We saw a traditional Vietnamese water puppet show. We weren’t sure what to expect, but we actually really enjoyed it. It was a little goofy, and kind of funny in parts! It depicted scenes of traditional Vietnamese life, culture, legends, and rural life. There was a screen that provided a brief description of what each “skit” was depicting in English, and then you were on your own to interpret it. It is performed by puppeteers hidden in waist-deep water, the shows are a millennium-old art form from the Red River Delta.
And my personal favorite… a Vietnamese Dan Davis water puppet!!
Dan and Emma arrived around noon on Christmas day!!! What an AWESOME Christmas present!!! And let me tell you, they hit the ground running! Even after about 30 hours of travel, they were ready to go! Amazing! We headed out for lunch and walked around a bit, but then I demanded they take a nap. After that we had an awesome food tour which ended at Train Street. Dan was in Vietnamese food heaven… he even got full! We had never seen that before!
The next day we did a really cool jeep tour all around Hanoi. In addition to hitting a groovy little coffee shop, we hit several important/historical sights. We made a brief stop at Long Bien Train Bridge which was built in 1902 by the French. Then we stopped at Tran Quoc Pagoda which is Hanoi's oldest Buddhist temple, founded in the 6th century. We saw the John McCain Memorial located by Trúc Bạch Lake where he was shot down which has existed in various forms through the years. The initial sculpture was from 1968, marking the event (celebration) of his capture. It was renovated in the 1980s and 90s as relations improved, becoming a symbol of reconciliation as McCain championed U.S.-Vietnam relations after the war.
Following the jeep tour, we visited to Hoa Lo Prison Museum (aka “Hanoi Hilton”). That was interesting… talk about spinning reality! They did a really good (graphic) job of depicting the horrific treatment of Vietnamese prisoners under the French colonization. But when they described the treatment of the American POW’s under the North Vietnam it was all rainbows and unicorns! Propaganda at its finest!!
We visited the Ho Chi Minh Complex which was pretty cool in sort of an intimidating kind of way! All run/policed by North Vietnamese government, so they don’t play when you do the “wrong” thing! We behaved as much as we could figure out how to, and were only yelled at a couple of times. We started at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum which literally houses the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese revolutionary leader who reunited the country after it had been divided into North and South VN. It was creepy and cool at the same time - and EXTREMELY somber. No photos of the dead guy… sorry! They got the idea to embalm his body from their good friends in the USSR who did the same with Lenin's body. This was not what Ho Chi Minh wanted! After the Mausoleum, visited the Ho Chi Minh Museum which was just ok.
On 12/28/25 we hired a driver and did a day trip about two hours south to Ninh Binh. We had already stayed in that area for two weeks, but saved some of the highlights to check out with Emma and Dan. We started the day at Mua Cave where we climbed 500 (brutal) steps up Ngoa Long Mountain. There were a few little caves temples along the way, but the highlight was view once we made it to the top. And the workout made us feel better about all we had been eating and drinking!
The next stop on our tour was Hoa Lu which was the first imperial capital of Vietnam and served as the seat of power for the Dinh and Le dynasties from 968 to 1009, and established the foundation for an independent Vietnamese state. Today it is mostly temples dedicated to the founding kings.
Our final adventure of the day was a boat ride through the Trang An complex, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape of limestone karsts, lush valleys, and interconnected waterways. You go through several caves and can stop along the way at some temples. Part of the rout was the film set from the movie “Kong: Skull Island”.
Before leaving Hanoi also hit some great rooftop restaurants and bars with Dan and Emma before leaving Hanoi, and we wandered the streets to see all the things! Hanoi is interesting and eclectic!
Below you can add a comment: type your text in the white box and then Post Comment. If you get a second panel, you just need to enter your name and then hit ‘comment as guest’.
Be nice with your comments, we can always delete them 😊
