BCD Travel Recommends: Hanoi
Slow-paced, yet quick to charm
Vietnam’s thousand-year-old capital is one of the most beguiling cities in Southeast Asia – a stylish, European-influenced metropolis with manicured lakeside promenades, tree-lined boulevards, ancient pagodas and French-colonial buildings painted in a peeling palette of jade, turquoise and burgundy.
Following years of rampant inflation, poverty and repression, the government introduced economic reform (doi moi) in 1986, allowing people to own their own businesses. Nearly sixty percent of the population in Vietnam was born after the war ended in 1975, and Hanoi feels like a city of teenagers.
Heading for the heart of Hanoi
Hoan Kiem Lake isn’t Hanoi’s biggest, or deepest, or even cleanest lake – but it is the spiritual center of the city.
It was from the depths of the lake, according to legend, that the 15th-century emperor Le Loi received a magic sword with which he routed Chinese occupiers. Hoan Kiem means Return of the Sword, commemorating the ceremonial moment when the emperor restored it to the lake. In one version of the legend, a golden turtle rose up to receive the sword, and giant turtles still inhabit the lake today.
Hoan Kiem is at its most crowded when few outsiders see it, at dawn. As the sky grows light, it reveals a throng of people in their underwear and pajamas, all around the banks, bending, twisting, punching the air, marching in place, flexing their torsos from side to side in a morning ritual of health. The lake’s tree-lined shores are perfect for people-watching, meditating, strolling and enjoying a glass of coffee.
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