Settling into Hanoi’s French Quarter

Hanoi arrived in a softer mood than we expected. After the relentless noise and motorbike ballet of other Vietnamese cities, the French Quarter felt almost restrained. Not quiet exactly, because this is still Vietnam and silence remains a theoretical concept, but calmer somehow. Broader streets, grander buildings, and a certain faded colonial elegance that suggested someone once had very ambitious plans for the place.

We stayed in the French Quarter for six days, which gave us something rare in travel: time.

It allowed us to wander without urgency whilst trying to recover from the flu and let the place seep in one street corner at a time. Hanoi is best understood on foot, so we walked constantly. By the end of the week, I felt certain that our feet had acquired more local knowledge than many of the taxis.

The Old Quarter by Day and Night

Most days we drifted back into the Old Quarter, which is where Hanoi truly performs. The streets formed a lively mixture of shops, scooters, food stalls and people who appeared to have relocated their entire domestic lives onto the pavement. One moment we passed a shop selling phone chargers, and the next we found lanterns, shoes and a woman producing bowls of noodles with the calm efficiency of someone who had been doing it since childhood.

During the day it buzzed with commerce and movement. At night it became warmer, louder and scented with grilled meat and exhaust fumes. Strangely, the traffic felt less intimidating than in other Vietnamese cities. Compared with some of the places we had already visited, Hanoi almost felt civilised, although only in the way a mischievous child becomes civilised when someone hands it a napkin and hopes for the best.

More Cars, Fewer Scooters Than Expected

One of the first things we noticed was the number of cars. Scooters still dominated, but Hanoi had far more cars than many of the other cities we had visited. The presence of so many vehicles changed the atmosphere. The roads felt broader and more formal, and the city carried the confident air of a capital that had decided to modernise, even if it occasionally forgot what that involved.

It changed the feel of the streets.

VinFast vehicles appeared everywhere. The electric cars, taxis and scooters multiplied with such enthusiasm that they seemed to be reproducing. The brand felt symbolic of the city’s direction, somewhere between the traditional Vietnam of street life and a more modern capital that was slowly edging toward electric futures.

Craig and the Smallest Barbershop in the World

At some point during our wandering, Craig decided he needed a haircut. This was not surprising, because Craig always decides he needs a haircut at the exact moment when we are nowhere near a normal barbershop. What was surprising was the establishment he chose. It was, without exaggeration, the smallest barbershop I have ever seen. It was so small that I initially mistook it for a broom cupboard that had been given a chair for company.

The entire shop consisted of one chair, one mirror and one barber who looked as if he had been folded into the space by someone with a gift for origami. There was barely enough room for Craig to sit down, and once he did, the barber had to shuffle sideways like a crab to reach his head.

I stood outside because there was no physical way for me to stand inside without becoming part of the haircut. I remained outside until the barber noticed that I was melting in the humidity like a forgotten ice cream. He took pity on me and beckoned me inside, where he allowed me to stand directly in front of the fan alongside a rat and a cockroach who appeared to be long-term residents. The three of us shared the breeze with the quiet understanding of creatures who had all made questionable life choices that had led them to this moment.

The barber worked with the intense concentration of a man performing delicate surgery in a space designed for storing umbrellas. Every time he moved, something in the shop rattled, shifted or threatened to fall over.

Despite the cramped conditions, the barber approached the task with absolute seriousness. He snipped, trimmed and shaped with the solemnity of someone who believed he was preparing Craig for a royal portrait. Craig, for his part, sat perfectly still with the expression of a man who had accepted his fate and was now simply hoping to survive it.

When the haircut was finished, the barber stepped back as far as the laws of physics allowed, admired his work and nodded with great satisfaction. Craig emerged from the shop looking neat, tidy and slightly traumatised, as if he had just survived a very polite hostage situation. I congratulated him on enduring the world’s smallest barbershop.

It was, in its own peculiar way, one of the highlights of Hanoi. It also summed up Hanoi rather well. Slightly chaotic, faintly absurd, and somehow completely functional.

Lakes, Walks and the Art of Going Nowhere

One of the pleasures of our stay was the simple act of wandering. Hanoi rewards aimless walking. Every route revealed something worth seeing, whether it was another lake, another grand building or another tree‑lined avenue that opened into a square or a hidden temple.

The grey sky suited the city. The warm, humid air rested heavily on our shoulders, and although it was not postcard weather, it matched Hanoi’s muted charm. We visited the famous mosaic wall, which is apparently the longest in the world. The claim sounded like the sort of fact cities enjoy attaching to things, but the wall genuinely impressed us with its endless stretch of colour.

We visited the Opera House, the prison and everything else our legs could tolerate. It felt less like sightseeing and more like a prolonged urban ramble conducted by two people who had forgotten how to stop walking.

The Temple of Literature 

We visited the Temple of Literature, which has a genuinely fascinating history, although the place itself felt like it had been designed by someone who disliked visitors. The site once housed Vietnam’s first national university, which is impressive, but the experience of walking through it felt more like navigating a school playground during a heatwave. The courtyards were crowded, the atmosphere was stifling and the whole place radiated the weary energy of an attraction that had long ago stopped trying.

We left agreeing that the history was excellent but the actual visit was, in the most polite terms available, fairly dreadful.

Easter Sunday at the Cathedral

One of the loveliest moments came on Easter Sunday. We found ourselves outside St Joseph’s Cathedral, sitting quietly and soaking up the atmosphere as Mass was taking place inside.

The square was full of people, the bells, the voices, the movement of worshippers coming and going. We didn’t need to be part of the service to feel the atmosphere. There was something rather moving about sitting there in the humid evening air, watching local families gather and tourists pause respectfully, all against the backdrop of this grand Gothic building in the middle of Hanoi.

Travel often gives you these accidental moments.

Nothing planned, nothing booked, just being in the right place at the right time.

The Restaurant With Empty Tables

Then there was Tandoor. We arrived to find two diners and roughly fifty empty tables. We asked for a table, which seemed a reasonable request. The waiter looked at us, looked at the empty room and announced that the restaurant was fully booked. He delivered the line with the serene confidence of a man who had long ago accepted that reality is flexible.

We looked at each other, then back at him. “No sir, we are fully booked.”

Craig immediately leaned towards me and whispered that he was clearly taking the piss.

To be fair, it did seem the only logical explanation.

The waiter then performed the classic head wobble. “No, no tables.”

His expression suggested he had not attempted a joke since the mid-1990s. We stood there for a moment, waiting for the invisible diners to appear. They did not. The room remained empty, and the restaurant remained mysteriously full.

Travel does not always provide explanations. Sometimes it simply hands you stories and expects you to treasure them.

Bar Street and the Great Table Vanishing Act

One evening we visited Bar Street, which was loud, busy and exactly as chaotic as we expected. Plastic stools and tiny tables filled the pavement, and drinks balanced precariously while scooters threaded through gaps that barely existed.

Without warning, everything changed. Bar owners began scrambling with astonishing speed. They grabbed tables, pushed drinks into customers’ hands and cleared the pavement with the urgency of people who had rehearsed this routine every night of their lives. Moments later the police arrived. Sometimes they came in a van and sometimes on scooters, and the entire scene resembled a nightly game of cat and mouse conducted by people who had forgotten which animal they were supposed to be.

The officers looked more like characters from a gentle television comedy than fearsome enforcers, which only added to the surreal atmosphere. Once they left, the tables reappeared as if nothing had happened. Order returned, although only in the loose Hanoi sense of the word.

Hanoi vs Ho Chi Minh City

Compared with Hanoi, we both much preferred Ho Chi Minh City. Saigon had more energy, more buzz, and somehow felt more naturally alive to us.

Hanoi, by contrast, felt slower and more fragmented, almost as if a hundred small villages had gradually been gathered together and told to behave like a capital city.

That said, Hanoi grows on you in a quieter way.

People may appear less outwardly friendly than in other regions, but much of that seems to come down to cultural norms and the pressures of big-city life rather than any lack of warmth.

Beneath the brisk exterior, there is still a strong sense of pride and welcome. There is also a sense that Hanoi carries the symbolic weight of the nation. It feels like the political and historical heart of Vietnam, even if, for us personally, it never quite matched the pull and excitement of the south.

Is Hanoi One of Vietnam’s Great Must-See Cities?

If I am completely honest, Hanoi did not strike us as one of Vietnam’s great showstoppers. There was no single landmark that made us feel the journey had been justified by that moment alone.

That said, our mood was not entirely on Hanoi’s side.

We arrived carrying the weight of Ha Giang. The experience there had knocked us more than we expected, and although we tried to lift ourselves out of it, we never quite managed. We kept attempting to reset, to find our usual rhythm, but it felt as though we were slightly out of step with everything around us.

We had, in simple terms, lost our mojo.

Perhaps that coloured our view more than we realised.

Instead of dazzling us, the city felt like a collection of small villages that had been stitched together by someone who enjoyed variety but disliked consistency.

Each district seems to have its own personality.

And that, in a way, is its charm. It isn’t a city that overwhelms with headline attractions.

French façades blended into market streets, which led to lakeside calm, which then spilled back into bars, scooters and street kitchens. Hanoi offered atmosphere rather than spectacle, and it grew on us slowly, in the same way humidity settles on your skin and refuses to leave no matter how politely you ask it to stop.

Hanoi did not grab us, but it settled on us quietly. And somehow, that gave it a rather nice feel