Vietnam For Our First Trip Of 2026
We knew the first few months of 2026 were going to be extremely busy, as is evident by me only having time to write this now (our visit to Beijing later in January taking precedence) and our first trip of the year was to Hanoi, Vietnam. The last time I was in Hanoi was back in late 2014 and I loved the city and it’s temperate climate so it would be interesting to see if it had changed much in the past 11+ years, as well as getting back to eating all the great stuff there too. The ESASO (European School for Advanced Studies in Ophthalmology) teaching symposium was being hosted in Hanoi and Anna would be presenting so four nights there seemed like the perfect way to start the year, however, I’m writing this almost three months later relying mainly on photos so it may be a little vague, but here goes…
Wednesday, January 7, 2026
We flew in and arrived where we would be staying, Lotte Hotel with its spectacular view, just after midday, having the entire first day to ourselves so we figured we should make the most of it and wander around some nearby areas of Hanoi:
Hanoi is the capital and second most populous municipality of Vietnam. It encompasses an area of 3,358.6 km2 (1,296.8 mi2), and as of 2025 has a population of 8,807,523. Hanoi had the second-highest gross regional domestic product of all Vietnamese provinces and municipalities at US$48 billion in 2023, behind Ho Chi Minh City. It hosts 78 foreign embassies, the headquarters of the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA), its Vietnam National University system, and other governmental organizations. Hanoi has 18.7 million domestic and international visitors in 2022. It hosts the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long, Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, Hoàn Kiếm Lake, West Lake, and Ba Vì National Park near the outskirts of the municipality. Hanoi’s urban area has architectural styles, including French colonial architecture, brutalist apartments and disorganized alleys and tube houses stemming from the city’s growth in the 20th century.
Maybe I’m remembering incorrectly, but I definitely don’t recall the city being this big! We dodged the thousands of scooters for whom pedestrian crossings seemingly don’t apply in order to get to the mall across the road for a coffee and a snack before weaving through them once more to explore our area. We found plenty of places where we wouldn’t mind eating at some point and there were a couple of shops we had a look at, but that could all wait for another day, because Anna having a free day in this part of the world meant heading to somewhere less hectic for a drink so it was inevitable that we would end up in The Old Quarter:
The Old Quarter is the name commonly given to the historical civic urban core of Hanoi, Vietnam, located outside the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long. This quarter used to be the residential, manufacturing and commercial center, where each street was specialized in one specific type of manufacturing or commerce.
Another common name referring to approximately the same area is the 36 streets after the 36 streets or guilds that used to make up the urban area of the city.
Of those 36 streets mentioned is Beer Street, obviously full of bars and the perfect way to spend the afternoon. We walked past a guy smoking weed out of a traditional bong-like pipe generally used for tobacco, found a cool bar with a balcony and kicked back and watched the world go by. A recurring event in this area is that when police come by all of the bars hurriedly move all of their outdoor furniture inside and ask all of the customers to come in as well, probably due to licensing reasons, but as soon as the cops are gone they just put it all back out equally fast, an event we would witness on an almost nightly basis while we were here.
Our day so far:
One of the main reasons we love coming to Vietnam, especially in the north, is the food and despite being in the same timezone as Singapore it gets dark about an hour earlier so after a few beers we were on the hunt for dinner. We began combing the many streets, some just lined entirely with coffee shops, others with tailors, and eventually found a restaurant serving soup, this time bún chả with an enormous side of crushed garlic and chili. It wasn’t just a normal side of garlic though, there was an entire bowl’s worth given to us. The soup and a different variety of fried rice paper rolls went down perfectly and would tide us over for a few more beers in the Old Quarter before heading back to the hotel, donning some far warmer clothing, and going up to our rooftop bar, finding an area out of the strong, cold breeze, a bar where even the staff were wearing puffer jackets.
Searching for somewhere to eat and then the view from the roof at night:
Thursday, January 8, 2026
Anna had attended the symposium in the morning so while I was having coffee once more across the road she eventually joined me for one too and then we went on to have phở for lunch. When we had finished it was time for her to return so I spent my afternoon just exploring the streets, first around our hotel and then branched out into the wider area after looking up some shops I wanted to check out. After a while navigating your way through the endless stream of scooters gets a bit draining and you just need somewhere to unwind so I ventured down to Đống Đan and just slowly wandering around the lake.
Anna was soon done and the sun was setting which meant it was time for dinner and she had chosen a place relatively nearby for some snails among other dishes. The restaurant was tiny and I probably wouldn’t have fit inside or perhaps there was the slight chance that I was the only tourist and they wanted to protect their reputation among the locals, but we were conveniently sat across the road. This didn’t bother me in the slightest, because they had tiny plastic stools inside and on my previous trip to Hanoi I had to sit on one at a minuscule table on the street with my knees up around my shoulders to eat some noodles. I lent forward to take a slurp from the bowl and the legs buckled underneath me, shooting the stool across the road and leaving me laying on my back with all the staff and patrons in hysterics. Instead this time we would be using grown up’s stools, our snails between us on one the same size, and as is always the case here, they were delicious.
We finished eating and then went back to the hotel and up to the rooftop bar to plan our next move. Besides where we were seated there weren’t a whole lot of entertainment options in the vicinity of the hotel so we walked back to Old Quarter where there certainly isn’t a lack of choices. We did a bit of a pub crawl, Anna on one occasion sitting in the ‘Billionaire’s Seat’ at the ‘Billionaire’s Table’ at Huy Beer Tay, where Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the seventh richest person in the world, once had a beer with current Vietnamese Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính. We also had to quickly shuffle inside while all of the outdoor seating was brought in again as a patrol car approached, but that was a minor inconvenience that lasted three minutes until everything returned to normal, so we pulled up our seats once more, bought a snack, and enjoyed the constant stream of entertainment walking by.
The lake, dinner, drinks, and the battle to give the illusion that there is no outdoor seating:
Friday, January 9, 2026
Friday was always going to be lowkey as Anna would be at the symposium all day and then there was an official dinner that night, but what really hammered home that fact was when I was battling my way through the traffic to cross the road to get my daily coffee. The general approach in a lot of busy South-East Asian cities is at a pedestrian crossing when you have right of way to just put your head down and walk, because a lot of vehicles, particularly scooters, will run red lights and try to weave their way through, but they also make an effort to not hit pedestrians. Well, most of the time, but on this occasion there was one that didn’t care, he had no intention of swerving and just came at me, slowing down not even occurring to him and without exaggeration I literally had to jump over his front wheel! If I had’ve done so maybe even less than a second later, he would have hit me. That’s when it occured to me that I just didn’t have it in me to deal with that traffic on foot that day. In fact while I was sitting at the table outside the cafe I saw two scooters crash and a few near misses as others tried to get around the pair on the ground so I navigated that road one final time for the day and just kicked back at the hotel.
A not-so-busy exit from a road near our hotel
We needed to be at dinner by 6:30pm which meant leaving our hotel a bit after 5:00pm, because despite the hotel where the dinner was to be held being only 7 km (4.3 mi) away, in Friday evening peak hour traffic in Hanoi it was going to take us over an hour to arrive there on time. There were a few people from the symposium staying in our hotel so we battled the traffic in a minibus and made it on time to the new location. The food was great, the conversation was what I have come to expect at dinners for events such as this, and when it was done several returned to our hotel with us for a freezing, windy night of drinks at our rooftop bar once more.
Saturday, January 10, 2026
Anna only had to attend the symposium in the morning and had the rest of the final day in town free. We had ticked off a couple of the dishes that we had intended to have on our short stay in Vietnam, but we hadn’t had bánh mì yet, a traditional Vietnamese bread roll stuffed with meat and all of the other good stuff. Every time I have one I can never figure out how they make a simple sandwich so good so I was more than keen for one and it didn’t disappoint.
Next on the agenda was to both explore some new spots and also take Anna to some cool places that I had stumbled upon over the past couple of days and thought she would enjoy. Saturday afternoon traffic wasn’t quite as bad as the other days, plus we wouldn’t really be going to areas with too many main roads around so it was actually an enjoyable afternoon, the first stops being Hàng Mã Street with its toys and paper goods, before slowly making our way to Long Biên, famous for its bridge that was extensively damaged during the war, but is still used by trains, scooters, bikes, and even pedestrians, but we decided to skip walking along it, because a lot of it still isn’t in the best shape, instead opting to look at the murals nearby. After that we grabbed a drink by a different area of the lake and watched the sunset as tacky swan-shaped paddle-boats went by.
Our day so far (minus the symposium):
Time to eat once more so we had a small dinner after our rather late lunch and then made a final trek to the Old Quarter for what is a recurring pattern on our adventures; meeting some complete strangers for a hilarious last night in town. First we walked along a canal, passing another powerpoint attached to a tree and found ourselves on a roadside bar, the furniture once more needing to be brought in and taken back out again to avoid detection. After a while we decided to find a place, maybe with some TV screens, eventually stumbling upon the perfect location, pulling up a seat outside for a beer and some more people watching while different sporting events played in the background. Eventually I needed to go to the bathroom and as I was coming back out I could hear banging coming from a frosted glass door next to where the toilets were. Curiosity got the better of me so I opened the door to see what was going on and a relieved-looking British guy who strongly resembled JD Vance was there thanking me profusely, saying that he had thought it was the toilet door, but had in fact entered a small room and the door immediately locked behind him. He told me he had been stuck in there for about 20 minutes, banging every time he saw a silhouette go past but nobody stopped to let him out until now and then he sprinted into the men’s room. He returned and looked for myself and Anna, telling me that he wanted to buy us some drinks as his way of saying thank you for not having to resort to urinating in a tiny room with no ventilation, and he mentioned that he had even considered calling his brother in the UK as if he could somehow help him while trapped. We sat down at a table with a random Scottish guy until the early hours of the morning, but as the Scot got more drunk it became almost impossible to understand him. I struggle with Scottish accents to begin with, I can only watch Trainspotting with the subtitles on so it gets infinitely more difficult if the person is slurring and barely able to keep their eyes open, us all trying our best to figure out what he was saying for the rest of the night.
Closing out our time in Hanoi in a fun way:
So in all it was a great time away besides almost getting taken out by a scooter, because Hanoi seems a lot bigger and far busier than I remember from 11 years ago, but still a great place!
Fascinating post. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, glad you enjoyed it!