Why Hanoi May Be the World’s Best Street-Food City Hanoi runs on soup. By 5:30 a.m. charcoal fires already heat enormous stockpots hidden down the Old Quarter’s alleyways. Elderly women balance bamboo poles loaded with bowls, herbs, and noodles on their shoulders, staking out a patch of sidewalk. Office workers […]
Why your neighborhood matters more than your hotel in Hanoi Hanoi is a city where two hotels at the same price can give you radically different stays depending on the neighborhood they’re in. A €35 boutique hotel in the Old Quarter puts you thirty seconds from the best pho in […]
Hanoi packs a thousand years of history into streets you can walk in a single day Hanoi is one of the oldest continuously inhabited capitals in Southeast Asia, founded in 1010 when Emperor Ly Thai To moved his court to the banks of the Red River. A thousand years later, […]
Hanoi is a city that runs at two speeds at the same time Inside the city it’s a tangle of motorbikes, street-food stalls and thousand-year-old temples squeezed into alleys barely wide enough for a cyclo. Yet just a few hours in any direction you’re gazing at limestone pinnacles rising out […]
Hanoi rewards travellers who prepare before they land. The visa application runs through a single official site, tucked among a dozen slick impostors. The currency comes in denominations so large you’ll feel like a millionaire for a moment. Traffic follows rules that make sense only after you’ve learned how to […]
Hanoi seizes your senses before you even have a chance to settle in. You step off the plane into warm, humid air, and within minutes you’re on the back of a Grab, hypnotised by a river of motorbikes that splits around your vehicle like water around a stone. There are […]
