Hanoi at the small plastic stool: a city of broth and motorbikes

It’s 6:11 a.m. and I’m crouched on a red plastic stool barely six inches off the pavement, with a bowl of pho bo on my knees, in front of a corner shop on Bat Dan Street that has been open since around 4:30. The proprietor — Bà Tu, sixty-eight, has been making this pho for forty-one years — ladles broth into another bowl behind me. The broth has been on since yesterday. The beef shanks, the charred ginger, the star anise. A motorbike with a family of four passes the corner. This is Hanoi.

Why I keep coming back

Hanoi is, for me, the great undersold city of Southeast Asia. Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) is the headline; Hanoi is the longer, slower, more reverberant experience. It has been a capital, in various forms, for a thousand years. The Old Quarter — the 36 phố phường, the 36 guild streets — is a tangled grid of narrow streets where each historically specialised in a single trade (Silver Street, Silk Street, Tin Street, Bamboo Street).

The food is one of the most refined street cuisines on earth — pho, bun cha, banh mi, banh cuon, bun bo nam bo, ca phe trung — each developed at a single shop over decades.

Where to base yourself

The Old Quarter for the street life. Choose a quieter street (Hang Quat, Hang Bac) rather than the noisy bar streets (Ta Hien).

French Quarter (south of Hoan Kiem Lake) for the wider streets, the colonial-era architecture, and slightly more breathing room.

West Lake (Ho Tay) if you want a calmer, less compressed base; a 15-minute taxi to the centre.

What to actually do

Walk the Old Quarter at 5 a.m. The motorbike traffic is at its lowest; the noodle shops are opening; the night-shift food stalls (banh my, bun rieu) are still serving. By 7 a.m. the city is fully awake. The first two hours are quietly extraordinary.

Walk the Hoan Kiem Lake at dawn. The central lake of the city, with the Turtle Tower in the middle and the red bridge to the Ngoc Son temple. At dawn, the lakeside is full of Hanoians doing tai chi, ballroom dancing (yes, on the pavement, to Vietnamese pop music from portable speakers), and badminton.

Visit the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and complex. Ho Chi Minh’s preserved body is on display in a Soviet-style mausoleum; the queues are organized, the experience is sober and short. The neighbouring Presidential Palace and the wooden Stilt House where Ho actually lived (refusing the palace) are part of the same visit.

Spend an afternoon at the Temple of Literature. The first national university of Vietnam, founded in 1070; five courtyards of stone steles, dragons, and lotus ponds. A surprisingly contemplative space in the centre of a busy city.

Take a day trip to Ninh Binh. Two hours south by train. The ‘inland Halong Bay’ — vertical limestone karsts rising out of flooded rice fields, traversed by small rowboats. Tam Coc and Trang An are the boat-route villages. Less famous than the coastal Halong Bay and arguably more atmospheric.

Hear ca trù. The classical Vietnamese chamber music form; the Thang Long Ca Trù Theatre in the Old Quarter does an hour-long performance several evenings a week. Strange, hypnotic, ancient.

Where to eat

The small specialist shops are the show.

Pho Gia Truyen (Bat Dan St) — Classic pho bo; one bowl, one variation, no nonsense. Queue at 6 a.m. Bun Cha Huong Lien (Le Van Huu St) — Bun cha (grilled pork patties in broth-dip, with vermicelli and herbs). The dish Obama and Anthony Bourdain ate here in 2016; the queues remain. Banh Cuon Gia Truyen (Hang Ga St) — Steamed rice rolls with minced pork and mushroom; you’ll watch them being made in front of you. Banh Mi 25 (Hang Ca St) — The classic Hanoi banh mi. Cafe Giang (Nguyen Huu Huan St) — The original egg coffee shop; thick whipped-yolk topping on Vietnamese coffee. Strange, excellent. Cha Ca Thang Long (Cha Ca St) — Hanoi’s famous turmeric-fried fish, a 130-year-old dish at this shop. Bia Hoi corner (Ta Hien & Luong Ngoc Quyen) — Local fresh draft beer, 8,000 dong (under US$0.50) a glass, on the plastic stools. The evening institution.

When to come

Late September to November, or March to early May — the spring and autumn windows. Pleasant temperatures, low rainfall.

December through February has cold north-Vietnamese winters (12–18°C, often grey); a different city, also beautiful.

Avoid May through September — hot, humid, with afternoon thunderstorms.

Practical notes

• Visa: E-visa or visa-on-arrival for most Western passports; processed online, takes a week, around US$25.
• Money: Vietnamese dong. ATMs are everywhere. Card increasingly accepted; cash for street food.
• Crossing the street: A genuine art form. The motorbikes will weave around you; you walk slowly and steadily, never run, never stop suddenly. Locals do it without looking.
• Transport: Walking and Grab. The taxis are mostly Grab-app-based now. Buses are useful for longer hops.
• Halong Bay: The classic boat-cruise destination 4 hours east. The 2- or 3-day overnight cruises are the move; day trips are exhausting.
• The hawking: The Old Quarter has aggressive street vendors aimed at tourists; the doughnut and fruit-on-a-shoulder-pole photographs are not free, and the vendors will demand payment if you photograph or accept their handover. Walk past politely.

A final thought

Hanoi is one of the cities that has changed most rapidly in the past twenty years and remained most recognisably itself. The motorbike count has gone from low millions to nearly 8 million within the metropolitan area. The skyline of the outer districts is now high-rise. And yet the Old Quarter, the central streets, the lake-side dawn rituals, the pho shops, the egg-coffee houses — these have persisted.

The city rewards a particular kind of attention: the willingness to sit on a low plastic stool, on a noisy pavement, with a bowl of something on your knees, and to take twenty minutes to eat it. The dishes are simple. The cooks are masters. The shops are old. The seats are uncomfortable. The transaction is roughly two dollars. This is the meal of Hanoi. Have it five times in a week. Walk slowly between them. Sleep in the Old Quarter. The city, for now, still works the way it worked a generation ago, and that is — increasingly in modern Asia — a rare thing.