Hanoi

Overview Hanoi

Hanoi | Vietnam - The official guide to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam where you can find lots of interesting things like the museums, the attractions, foods as well. You will never find it boring while in Hanoi, where the ancient and modern culture of Vietnam are preserved in the proudest way by people here. Hanoi, the 1000-year-old city, is the land of history with astounding sanctuaries, antiquated fortresses, one-of-a-kind theater and staggering wild outside the city all offer you sensational days. Make a point to experience all the things to do as they all offer stimulation, magnificence in various ways. Enjoy the most of Hanoi with our Things to Do in Hanoi list. In this city, there are plenty of arts to discover, streets to wander, foods to savor and more!
opera house hanoi

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The Ho Chi Minh complex

Hanoi attractions are all the stunning remainders of its 1,000-year history. Buddhist sanctuaries, antiquated fortresses, remarkable architecture by French, conventional towns and peaceful parks set outside the city center. Perhaps the loveliest element to this French-pioneer city is its numerous lakes, offering delightful stops to rest in the middle of wandering out in the capital’s clamoring avenues. Voyagers will never struggle on finding places to visit in Hanoi, as they can discover local markets and Vietnamese culture together with the city’s urbanization of luxury lodging brands, glossy office towers and huge shopping centers. To inspire you on starting a journey in the capital of Vietnam, we will name a few sightseeing spots that are unmissable while you in Hanoi:

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum – A further insight into Vietnam Great Father’s life

Hoa Lo Prison – A horrible prison

Old Quarter Hanoi – Fun and absolutely unmissable Hanoi Old Town

St Joseph’s Cathedral Hanoi – Paris in a glimpse

West Lake – A popular place for recreation

Long Bien Bridge – The symbol of courageousness during war

And more to find in our detailed Hanoi travel guide. Check it out!

Foodvender in Dong Xuan Market Hanoi

Eating

Wandering around Hanoi streets can make you hungry easily. You now wondering what to eat in Hanoi Vietnam? As locals, we will show you the best food that you can find in Hanoi. Look at our preferred Hanoi eateries, bistros, bars and road sustenance since you won’t have any desire to miss a thing during your days here.

Hanoi street food is without a doubt something you should experience in Vietnam capital city. Hanoi takes the expression “street food” in the right way – food is actually all over the places. Each square has many bistros, with dishes spilling on to walkways covered with modest plastic seats and also tiny tables.

Whether it’s day or night, you can find something to eat just taking a walk on Hanoi roads. For the day, Old Quarter Hanoi is full of foods like fruit, pho and banh my. Then for the night, these avenues truly wake up with the sorts of foods that Hanoi people love most including the remarkable sticky rice.

You don’t need to stress over being starved during your days in Hanoi. There are bunches of incredible street food to eat in Hanoi in our travel guide above. Don’t miss out!

silk shop in the Old Quarter,

Shopping

Shopping in Hanoi is acclaimed for its local markets and shophouses, however, there are a developing number of blaze boutiques and shopping centers offering a wide scope of worldwide brands, also feasting and excitement alternatives. The most enjoyable thing about shopping in Hanoi is that you can do everything by walking, with numerous boulevards devoted to explicit exchanges. This is especially valid in the Old Quarter, 36 trade streets, where still hold specific exchanges following many years. Regardless of whether you are searching for souvenirs, for example, Vietnamese cultivating caps or hand-made silk, we have arranged a rundown of extraordinary spots to shop in Hanoi above.

hanoi night

Nightlife

Hanoi’s nightlife offers a large number of intriguing things to see and places to go when the sun is down. The city’s energetic bars and captivating clubs are helpfully set around Sword Lake and the Old Quarter. And you can appreciate extraordinary tunes and a wide range of alcohol with carefree locals and travelers. Your night in Hanoi isn’t finished without sitting back and appreciate bia hoi in the clamoring lanes. Because of the Hanoi’s fairly severe laws, dance club and bars typically close at 12 PM, yet you can discover some that stay open. Check the details to discover what to do in Hanoi at night!

bai dinh trang an day tour

Hanoi Day Trips

Hanoi is a spot where you’ll need to put in a couple of days and truly investigate every historical center, tourist spots, eateries and nightlife. When the traffic and brown haze begins to make you frantic, abandon the city and deep into a day trip. It tends to be hard to limit your decisions, so we are here to give you a suggested day trip from Hanoi. Make sure to check it out!

a highlight of Museum of Ethnology

Hanoi Museums

There are a lot of museums in Hanoi that you can have the opportunity to get familiar with Vietnam’s culture and history while getting away daytime deluges during your vacation. Containing special relics and photos, point by point (and regularly frightening) stories and local fine arts, you must pay a visit to Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Vietnam Women’s Museum. Tickets are evaluated from 10,000 VND to 25,000 VND for each individual, contingent upon which Hanoi museum you visit. See our list for variety options!

a highlight of Museum of Ethnology

Hanoi Museums

There are a lot of museums in Hanoi that you can have the opportunity to get familiar with Vietnam’s culture and history while getting away daytime deluges during your vacation. Containing special relics and photos, point by point (and regularly frightening) stories and local fine arts, you must pay a visit to Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Vietnam Women’s Museum. Tickets are evaluated from 10,000 VND to 25,000 VND for each individual, contingent upon which Hanoi museum you visit. See our list for variety options!

Transport & Getting Around

Getting around Hanoi

Getting around in Hanoi is genuinely simple in light of the fact that various attractions, cafés, shopping settings, and inns are found near one another. Almost locals use motorbikes for traveling while motor-taxi, buses and private vehicles are accessible for tourists when you need to visit different areas inside Hanoi. This is an extremely minimized city and most voyagers remain inside the locale of Hoan Kiem (which incorporates the Old Quarter and the French Quarter), Ba Dinh, Tay Ho (West Lake), and Hai Ba Trung during their vacation.

GrabBike: Call a grab bike by Grab app. You can easily book a Grab in Hanoi streets but the drivers don’t speak English or any other languages so it might be difficult in communication.

Motorbikes: You can rent a motorbike to go around or you can book a Hanoi Motorbike Tours.

Public Buses: Affordable and easily available, public buses have a well-spread network across Hanoi. Southern Bus Terminal, Gia Lam Bus station, Luong Yen Bus Station are some of the major bus stations in the city.

Trains – The city has two main train stations: Gia Lam Station and Hanoi Railway Station. The train ticket is reasonable and the cheapest among all the transportation in Hanoi.

More option can be found in our detailed guide above.

Hanoi has a mellow, tropical atmosphere of northern Vietnam with the dry season starting from November to April and the wet season starting from May to October. The long stretches of June through August are ordinarily the hottest and wettest in the year. For a specific time to go, please check below

Best time to visit Hanoi

Hanoi has a total of 4 seasons in which spring and autumn are 2 transitional seasons and last for a very short amount of time.

Summer here in Hanoi is hot with high rainfall and winter is very cold and dry. Spring: Spring lasts from February to April and the weather is humid and wet with drizzles. The average temperature normally ranges from 15 to 20-celsius degree. Also called the blossom season, spring is the time for plants to grow and flower to blossom. If you visit Hanoi in spring, you will get a chance to join many holidays and celebrations. Summer: Summer in Hanoi is very hot, sometimes the temperature rises up to near 40-celsius degree. Summer lasts from May to August and heavy rain is regularly occurring. However, this is when you can join many activities in the day but be ready to sweat a lot under the sun.

Autumn: Autumn only lasts about 1 month and is a transactional season. However, this is the most beautiful and romantic time for traveling to Hanoi. This season is charming with warm sunlight, breeze and dry atmosphere. The scenery is clear and beautiful in autumn in Hanoi.

Winter: Winter in Hanoi is cold with high humidity, the cold is very different from one in Western countries. This season starts from December to late February. Bring some serious warm clothes is necessary. There’s no specific season that you have to avoid when visiting Hanoi. Each season has its own feature and there are many things to do in each. However, remember that winter in Hanoi can be a little hard since the temperature can drop to under 10-degree celsius.

5. Other information for Hanoi

  • History 

Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam, is situated on the Red River’s banks and about 100km from the waterway’s mouth. They said that people have occupied the place as right on time as the third century B.C.

In 1010, King Ly Thai To moved and set the citadel here, named it Dai La. When transferring place to place, King Ly Thai To saw a golden dragon ascending from the Red River. At that point, he chose to rename Dai La to Thang Long, which signifies “Ascending Dragon”. Nowadays, Thang Long is known as Hanoi. The name is given by Kinh Minh Mang in 1831. “Ha” signifies river while “Noi” signifies within. Therefore, the name of the city signifies “within the river”

 

  • Hanoi Facts

We have listed down numerous spots to discover, activities to experience. But above all, we figured you may be interested in this city. Thus, we have rattled off certain facts about Hanoi with the goal that you may get a little understanding of this city. So check it out!

 

  • Administrative divisions

Hanoi has 12 urban districts, 17 rural districts and 1 town. When Ha Tay was converged into Hanoi in 2008, Ha Dong was changed into a urban district while Son Tay debased to a town. They are additionally subdivided into 22 towns, 399 communes and 145 wards.

 

  • Economy

Hanoi has the most elevated Human Development Index among the urban areas in Vietnam. Following an ongoing positioning by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Hanoi will be the quickest developing city on the planet as the GDP development from 2008 to 2025. In 2013, Hanoi added 12.6% to GDP while sent out 7.5% of total exports. Also, the city added 17% to the national spending plan and pulled in 22% investment Vietnam capital. Industrial creation in the city has encountered a fast blast since the 1990s, with yearly development of 19,1% from 1991–95, 15,9% from 1996–2000, and 20,9% during 2001–2003. Hanoi is building five new huge scale modern parks and 16 little and medium-sized modern bunches. Like Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi appreciates a quickly growing land market. Nowadays, the most outstanding new urban zones are focal Trung Hoa Nhan Chinh, My Dinh, the sumptuous zones of The Manor, Ciputra, Royal City in Nguyen Trai Street and Times City.

 

  • Development

About infrastructural development, an improvement groundbreaking strategy for Hanoi was structured by Ernest Hebrard in 1924, however, was just in part implemented. The connection between the Soviet Union and Vietnam prompted the making of the main extensive arrangement for Hanoi with the help of Soviet organizers somewhere in the range of 1981 and 1984. It was never acknowledged in light of the fact that it had all the earmarks of being inconsistent with Hanoi’s current layout. Hanoi yet has many issues related to expanding urbanization. The divergence of riches between the rich and the poor is an issue in both the capital and all through the country. Its public infrastructure is now in poor condition. Hanoi has successive power cuts, air and water contamination, poor street conditions and traffic clog. Traffic blockage and air contamination are compounding as the quantity of engine cycles increments. Squatter settlements are developing the external edge of the city as vagrancy rises.

About civil society development, during the 1990s, Hanoi experienced huge neediness easing because of both the market changes and common society movements. Most of the municipal associations in Hanoi were built up after 1995, at a rate much slower than in Ho Chi Minh City. Organizations in Hanoi are more “custom bound,” concentrated on arrangement, training, examine, proficient premiums and engaging legislative associations to deal with social problems. Hanoi-based urban associations utilize increasingly methodical improvement and to a lesser extent an immediate intercession way to deal with issues of country advancement, destitution lightening and natural security. In Hanoi, 16.7% of municipal associations acknowledge anybody as an enrolled part and 73.9% case to have their own spending limits. A greater part of the civic associations thinks that it’s hard to work with legislative associations. Huge numbers of the stressed relations between non-legislative and administrative associations result from statism, an inclination against non-state associations with respect to government entities.

 

  • Tourism

With the French influences, Hanoi has named as the “Paris of the East” and become a popular tourist attraction in Vietnam.

Attractions in Hanoi are commonly gathered into two primary regions: the Old Quarter and the French Quarter. The Old Quarter area around Hoan Kiem Lake with little roads and ancient vibe. Numerous roads in the Old Quarter have named following the products that the dealers were or are represented for.

The “French Quarters” (Hanoi Opera House, the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi Hotel, the National Museum of Vietnamese History and the St. Joseph’s Cathedral) has a particular French Colonial style manors and wide roads. Also, Ba Dình area where is the political focal point of Vietnam also attracts many tourists and has a high convergence of Vietnamese government central command, including the Presidential Palace, the National Assembly and a few embassies and ministries. The One Pillar Pagoda and Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum have always been the famous tourist spots.

From 2014, Hanoi has reliably been chosen as the world’s top ten destinations by TripAdvisor. It positioned eighth in 2014, fourth in 2015 and eighth in 2016. Also, it is the most moderate places in TripAdvisor’s yearly TripIndex report. In 2017, Hanoi attracted in excess of 5 million international tourists and is expected to grow more in the upcoming years.

 

  • International Tourists

Just in the half-year of 2019, Hanoi invited 3.3 million international tourists which is an expansion of 10.6% contrasted with a similar period a year ago. The capital city got about 14.4 million travelers in the principal half of the year, more than 9.5% a year ago. All the income from the travel industry exercises is up to 50.24 billion VND (~ 2.2 million USD), expanded by 30% a year ago.

The Department of Tourism hopes to attract 28.58 million travelers in 2019 including 6.68 million global travelers. It has defined the objective to reach 87.78 billion VND (~ 3.8 million USD) in income this year and a 60-65% inhabitance rate at accommodations. So as to advance the city, Hanoi People’s Committee has marked a notice of comprehension on co-task with the CNN channel to present the way of life, history and individuals of the capital city.

 

Hanoi for the First time visitors

Love it or hate it, there’s no denying it – Hanoi is intense. Once you step outside the roads, you hear street vendors calling, horns honking, and you see webs of traffic as you’ve never experienced. But hold on, dig beneath the crowds and chaos and you’ll find an enchanting city where a rich history melds with a complicated modernity. From French architecture to ancient temples and pagodas, Hanoi has it all wrapped up. Let’s explore the city on a Hanoi tour and get the local scoop on this much-loved destination.

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