"Hanoi, the old capital" a Hanoi Travel Page by SirRichard

Hanoi showed me 2 faces when I was there:

I arrived one rainy evening, in a minibus from the airport. I had read that it was a quiet pleasant city, but what I found was a busy noisy traffic jammed (with motorbikes!) city, with narrow crazy streets, a bit stressing...

But after leaving the rucksack at the hotel and take a shower, I took a walk by the Hoam Kien Lake and it utned out to be a totally different city, an oasis of calm and peace, people fishing, doing taichi exercises, reading newspapers by the lake shore...

In Madrid we are used to traffic jams, but they are CARS traffic jams. I had never seen so many motorbikes running up and down like ants in an anthill... With cars you know how to take care, but with motorbikes is difficult to cross the street, they pass you by so close, you have to keep looking all around all the time!!

In Hanoi I found that colonial flavour that I was hoping to find in Saigon, but didn't there!

Here you can still find little european style houses from the 1920-40s. Most of them need some urgent refurbishing, but it's nice to walk by some old alleys and find this little treasuries...