Vietnam/Cambodia Day 16: Farewell to Hanoi

Friday, February 20, 2026

Today is our last day in Hanoi; very early tomorrow, we fly home. But we have basically the whole day to continue sightseeing.

After re-packing our bags, checking out of the hotel, and storing them there, we set out for the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology to learn more about the many ethnic groups of Vietnam. It was some distance from the hotel, so we called for a ride with the Grab app, which is somewhat analogous to Lyft or Uber in the US. A car soon came to take us there; we fortunately had the right change to pay for the ride because Grab doesn’t handle the payment. But soon after waving the cab goodbye, we discovered that the museum was closed for Tet. This hadn’t been clear from the online information, and we saw several others who were similarly surprised. We walked around the outside and read some informative signs on the fence around the museum, and then continued toward our next destination, a nearby shopping mall.

En route to the mall, we were in a newer and less congested part of Hanoi and encountered many more businesses closed for Tet than we had seen in the more touristy parts of town. Eventually, we got to an area with a couple of shopping malls across from each other. We were considerably ahead of schedule, having not taken time for the museum, so we did some shopping, drank Vietnamese coffee, and had a phone call with our daughter, for whom it was Thursday evening.

We had heard about a very good pizza place in Hanoi, Pizza 4P’s. It requires reservations, and we had made a lunch reservation for 1 pm. It was a very elegant restaurant with a variety of Italian food, not just pizza. We opted for the signature pizza, which was good but really didn’t live up to the hype.

Our next stop was a bit of a distance, so we again grabbed a Grab to take us to the Ho Chi Minh museum. It also appeared not to be open, so we walked around to an entrance to the grounds for the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. We had to go through a security check to enter the grounds, but it turned out to be a cursory check, and we entered easily. The mausoleum itself is a large rectangular concrete building reminiscent of similar memorials we had seen elsewhere in Asia. The grounds were immaculately kept, and there was an honor guard that also kept people from sitting in or wandering into the wrong areas.

Exploring the grounds, we came across the One Pillar Pagoda, a Buddhist temple almost 1000 years old. We took many pictures of the attractive exterior of the pagoda, but opted not to go in.

From the mausoleum complex, we continued to the “train street”: a narrow street with a train track running down the middle. The train still operates, and restaurant and cafe customers sit at tables only inches away from the passing trains when they go by. The street was very crowded at the time we were there, and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough so we didn’t get to experience the passing of a train.

We returned to the hotel, again checking out nearby restaurants for dinner, but having eaten so well on this trip we yet again returned to the rooftop restaurant for something simpler. After a leisurely dinner, we returned to the hotel lobby about 8 pm for our transfer to the airport. Due to crowding and street closures, the car could not stop in front of the hotel, so the bellhop helped get our bags to the car, a block or so away.

When we got to Hanoi Airport, it was super crowded, and the car couldn’t drop us off at the correct level for departures. We got out on a different level and found our way to departures, with long lines even for the escalators. My best guess is that this was a surge of travelers returning home after visiting relatives for Tet. Fortunately, our business class tickets got us into express lines, so we didn’t have much of a wait to check bags or go through security, although we did have a bit of a wait at immigration.

We were able to spend the time before our flight in a business lounge. When we got there, we again met up with Jeff and Barbara, who were flying to the East Coast via Dubai but leaving at a similar time to us. We had a pleasant time exchanging stories of our activities that day before heading to the gates for our just-after-midnight flights.

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.