On Missing Hanoi

Hanoi offers a rare opportunity to witness old-world charm as it morphs with the future. The bare elements for sustenance—from the nomadic fruit seller to the street cart vendors—remain in the labyrinth tree-lined corridors of the French colonial Old Quarter, as they have for centuries. Meanwhile, if you open the Uber app in the Old Quarter, hundreds of little Uber-mopeds icons swarm like honeybees to your vicinity. But seeing the city of Hanoi is not complete without a drive out to the famous UNESCO Site, Ha Long Bay, to see first hand, the postcard perfect limestone isles of Ha Long Bay.

- Debra Winter

I first knew Hanoi through my friend, Kim-Ly’s eyes long before I had even Googled the city. She moved from the bustling warmth of Hanoi ten years before to a sleepy suburb in cold Canada and was terribly homesick. She described her hometown with admirable pride and nostalgia: the saturation of colour, the people and vibrancy; the French influence on cuisine, namely the baguette sandwich, reinterpreted as banh mi; and her longing for traditional foods, such as pho, bun nem, or banh tom, prepared on almost every street corner.

When I told her that I would be visiting Hanoi for a few days, she sent me a list of her favourite places: the Old Quarter (Hoan Kiem), the Temple of Literature (Temple of Confucius), Dong Xuan market, Ngoc Son Temple, and the UNESCO site, Ha long Bay. And she wanted a photo of the home she grew up in, the last place she had lived before moving to Canada.

From the airport, Hanoi immediately unfolds with ever more saturated colours the closer you get to the city-center. Storefronts painted in blues, orange, yellows flowed by like a living chromatic filter. Crisscrossing the lush tree-lined streets seemed thousands of people on scooters, bicycles and motorcycles, squeezing between lanes, all in a hurry to start the evening. But all that motion and the exciting, dense and chaotic melting pot of activity suddenly fell away when I arrived at the quiet French colonial splendour of the Sofitel Legend Metropole.

The award winning, neo-classical hotel—noted for its white façade trimmed with green shutters—is one of the top properties to stay at in Hanoi. There were other hotels I was interested in: the lakefront rooms at the Intercontinental Westlake Hanoi, and the 65-story view from contemporary, Lotte Hotel - but I had my heart set on the Metropole located only steps away from the Opera House and Old Quarter.