Love it or hate it. As simple as that 🙂 When we arrived to Hanoi we didn’t like it at all and at the end of our stay We loved it 🙂
The old town as the name might suggests is very compact, dirty and the traffic is even more chaotic than anywhere else in Vietnam. Small restaurants on the streets using the sidewalk as service area so there is no way that you can walk in peace you have to walk on the street where all the motorcycles and cars beeping their horns 24/7 🙂
The next day we got out of the area and We realized that it is a quite nice city actually. There is a small lake just like 10 minutes walk away from the old town, there are many restaurants in that area and endless number of street markets.
Every kind of product ( like shoes, necklaces, etc ) have their dedicated streets in the old town so if you are looking for a specific product you better ask your hotel’s reception where is that area otherwise you might just walk around aimlessly for hours to find it.
Hanoi is kind of a base for travellers visiting Ha Long Bay or the Sapa region there are many arranged tours to both sights.
We actually didn’t do much of sightseeing walked around the lake and the old town but that was it really. I guess We are just having a bit of an overdose of monuments, temples and all that.
We stayed at the Serenity hotel which is located in the middle of the old town. The hotel staff was very kind, the room was clean but basic, free Wifi and We paid $25 / night for a superior room which was quite OK. We got very lucky here actually. After a 2 day trip we were going to stay in Serenity for one more night before flying to Laos. Now a few rooms in the hotel got flooded due to some pipe cracks and the hotel manager offered us to take us to a different hotel with the same management. We were not very happy about it at first then we figured that this hotel is actually lot better in quality we got a suite with separate bathroom, kitchen, and a bathroom that finally had a shower cabin ( haven’t seen this anywhere in SE Asia up until now ) and the best thing was that we got it for the same price and the taxi from one hotel to the other was paid my them 🙂 This room normally costs around $60.
The other very positive thing was that we checked out around 12.00 as we were supposed to, went for lunch and a walk in the city, then around 13:30 we got back to the hotel. All our luggages were already stored however the receptionist offered that we can go back to our room to take a shower and just stay there until we have to leave at 15:00 to the airport.
Tip: If you want to have a cheaper hotels there are many backpackers hotels for around $5 a night on ly quoc su road.
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