Walking tour of Hanoi

Saturday, January 2 – The walking tour went well. Lonely Planet Tour books always have great walking tours outlined for major cities, and Hanoi is just so much fun to walk around – at least in the Old Quarter, where we were.

The Old Quarter is the heart of Hanoi and it’s chock-a-block with little shops and vendors on winding streets packed with two-wheeled vehicles. And the walking tour took us through the majority of the quarter. Here are some of the cool things we saw:

• Hoan Kiem Lake: If Old Quarter is the heart of Hanoi, the lake is the heart of the quarter. Everything spreads out from here. It’s a lovely, if crowded, spot in the middle of the city.
  
• Ngoc Son Temple: Located on an island in the lake (connected by a small bridge), this place was packed with people. It’s the first temple we’ve ever visited that had an admission fee (other than the temples at Angkor Wat, of course). And the only real draw here was the location. Not much to see inside the temple.
  
• Mixed Bag: We then wound our way up one side of the quarter, passing various tradespeople (gravestone sculptors, tinsmiths, tailors) and up to the old Eastern stone gate of the city – which is still standing. From there we took a walk down a very narrow street where locals were selling all sorts of butchered creatures, from pork and beef, to fish, to frogs, to baby eels and insect larvae. It kind of creeped us out.
  
• We then hit the local market – a huge affair, similar to the one we saw in Cholon (Ho Chi Minh City). Not much new here though.
  
• The Temple of Literature – the first university established in Vietnam – was next on the list. That turned out to be a lovely spot – smack in the middle of town, but walled and therefore removed from the noise of the city streets. It was a refuge. Plus we got to hear a performance of traditional Vietnamese music, which was lovely.
  
• 
  Last but not least was the Ho Chi Minh Complex where we saw the Ho Chi Minh Museum (we didn’t go in), The mausoleum and royal palace (we couldn’t go in), and the One Pillar Pagoda (a small and delicate temple, and Hanoi landmark).