Vietnam/Cambodia Day 14: Exploring Hanoi

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

After an enjoyable buffet breakfast at our hotel, we set out to explore Hanoi a bit. Hoan Kiem Lake is only a few blocks away and was also a stop for some hop-on hop-off bus tours that we considered. The many scooters and cars made crossing streets a challenge. Just walking down the street was often tricky because of scooters and merchants’ goods parked on the “sidewalk”, making it necessary to frequently divert out to the street.

When we arrived at the lake, we found a large, very popular park area. Since it is the Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday, we were told that Hanoi might be deserted because so many people go to visit their families elsewhere. That was not in evidence here, with many families gathering at the lake to take pictures (apparently a New Year tradition). The park around the lake was also specially decorated for Tet, with many flowers (particularly chrysanthemums) and festive signs wishing us a Happy New Year.

We went to a ticket booth to book a hop-on hop-off bus tour, and the first one available was at 1:15 pm. Since it was only 11 am, we decided to walk around the lake. There were uncluttered sidewalks, although we did have to stop often to stay out of the way of family pictures. Den Ngoc Sun temple, on an island in the lake connected by a bridge, was particularly busy and we didn’t attempt to go there.

By the time we returned to the ticket booth, we were both a little hungry. We decided to avoid the American fast food like KFC and discovered that many of the other places only served coffee and related beverages. Eventually, we bought a couple of barbecued chicken skewers from a street vendor and coffee from one of the shops to go with it.

At the appointed time, we got in line for the tour bus, which started a few minutes later. As we had hoped, the tour took us past quite a few Hanoi landmarks, including Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, Hoa Lo Prison (the “Hanoi Hilton”), the Vietnamese Women’s Museum, and the Temple of Literature. We didn’t opt to hop off at any of the stops because of the limited time we had available, but we did need to get off a couple of stops before we had completed a full loop. We would have had to change buses here, but instead we just left the tour.

We were interested in going back to see the Vietnamese Women’s Museum, so we walked there and toured it. There was an excellent display of fabrics and clothing from several of Vietnam’s ethnic minorities, in addition to the expected exhibits highlighting women’s contributions to Vietnam’s history. Returning to the hotel, we passed by the Hoa Lo Prison but decided not to visit the prison itself.

Tired at this point, we decided to check out the rooftop restaurant/bar for dinner. It was quite peaceful, a nice counterpoint to the frantic pace of Hanoi. As an added bonus, we had a great view of occasional fireworks celebrating Tet.

This article is part of a series about our recent trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.