Best Things to Do in Hanoi

Hanoi rewards unhurried exploration on foot: its finest sights sit clustered around three lakes and two historic districts, interspersed with shaded temple courtyards and lively street kitchens. Group your days by area so you spend less time in traffic and more time wandering.

1. Circle Hoan Kiem Lake and cross the Huc Bridge to Ngoc Son Temple. Walk the willow-shaded path at dawn or dusk, admire the diminutive Turtle Tower reflected on the water, and cross the scarlet wooden bridge to the 19th-century island shrine.
2. Get lost in the 36 guild streets of the Old Quarter. Trace centuries of urban trade along Hang Bac (silversmiths), Hang Ma (festive paper crafts), Lan Ong (traditional herbal medicine) and the restored timber merchant house at 87 Ma May.
3. Walk through the five courtyards of the Temple of Literature (Van Mieu). Founded in 1070 as Vietnam's first national university, this tranquil complex preserves stone stelae mounted on carved tortoises bearing the names of royal doctoral graduates.
4. Visit the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum complex and One Pillar Pagoda in Ba Dinh. Cross broad Ba Dinh Square to view the solemn granite mausoleum, walk past the mustard-yellow Presidential Palace to Ho Chi Minh's wooden stilt house, and see the lotus-shaped One Pillar Pagoda nearby.
5. Explore the UNESCO-listed Imperial Citadel of Thang Long. Stand before the Doan Mon southern gate, climb the Hanoi Flag Tower precinct, and inspect the underground D67 revolutionary command bunker and archaeological excavations.
6. Watch a performance at Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre. Right at the north-east corner of Hoan Kiem Lake, puppeteers waist-deep behind a bamboo screen animate lacquered wooden figures across a water stage to live northern folk music.
7. Sunset at Tran Quoc Pagoda on West Lake (Tay Ho). Cross the causeway between West Lake and Truc Bach Lake to Hanoi's oldest Buddhist pagoda, whose tall red brick stupa glows against the western sky at dusk.
8. Visit the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology or Vietnamese Women's Museum. Discover the textiles, customs and full-scale timber longhouses and stilt homes of Vietnam's fifty-four ethnic groups in Cau Giay, or explore the central Women's Museum on Ly Thuong Kiet Street.
9. Taste bun cha, beef pho and whipped egg coffee. Pull up a low stool for smoky grilled pork with herbs and rice noodles, followed by frothy ca phe trung in a tucked-away upstairs cafe.
10. Take a day trip to Ninh Binh or Ha Long Bay. Ride south to the inland limestone karsts and rowboat caves of Trang An and Tam Coc, or cruise among emerald islands in the Gulf of Tonkin.