We’ve just set off on our first far-away adventure since Covid struck. Rather perversely my thoughts turn to our last big trip to Vietnam. I somehow didn’t have the heart write about it then. Now I do. So while I gather my thoughts about Madrid, and as we move on to Buenos Aries, I look back on Hanoi with so many good memories. I cannot say that the information in the practical stuff still holds. But I leave it there – just in case. 

Hanoi doesn’t seem to have parks. It has lakes. Well, some are not more than ponds. But then there are more than a hundred of them.

The first thing we did, on our first morning in the city, was to walk around Hoan Kiem Lake. It’s just the right size for a pleasant stroll; long enough so that you feel you deserve a drink afterwards. Sadly, cake is a little hard to come by in Vietnam. We sat on a bench and listened to a guy with a peaked cap continuously blowing his whistle. A woman swept the paving stones with a straw broom and prepared her patch for the day. She removed a dead fish from the lake, carefully wrapping it in newspaper before throwing it into a nearby rubbish bin. Seemingly satisfied she’d done her best, she then started selling bubble-blowing stuff to kids.

The street-theatre performance finished for just a short while, we directed our attention to the run-down Turtle Tower on an islet at one end of the lake. Ramshackle but romantic. Hoan Kiem has a thing with turtles. Legend claims that in the mid-fifteenth century Heaven sent Emperor Ly Thai To a magical sword, which he used to drive the Chinese from Vietnam. After the war a giant golden turtle grabbed the sword and dived into the depths to restore it to it’s divine owners. A sword in the stone story in reverse. There used to be (and still are, according to some) turtles in the lake. At Ngoc Son Temple two of them crouch preserved under glass boxes, stunned expressions sitting eternally on their faces.

Hoan Kiem is tourist central, but has just enough of a local feel to be charming. Guys working out on portable gym equipment and kicking shuttlecocks at one end, and as darkness falls, ‘dancing ladies’ at the other, busting disco moves and working out to tinny sounds from a cassette player. But for real local life we headed off to other lakes, like Truc Bach – laid-back and residential. First settled in the seventeenth century, it has an Old Quarter feel but is peaceful and quiet. On our first visit mist clung to it’s shores. The swan pedal-boats remained tethered firmly to their pier and buildings were barely visible. But the weather did nothing to deter the street life. Two men played mahjong lakeside. Ladies stretched and chatted on benches. Silhouetted against a smoky white-out, framed by branches, and seemingly oblivious to the beauty of it all. Pavement cafes were full with the lunchtime crowd, and the small market was in full swing.

Detouring a little we found Aummee, which became our favourite veggie restaurant. After lunch a weak, watery sun played peak-a-boo with the clouds, enough so that the mist lifted ever so slightly. Enticed by plastic tables and chairs, we went to sit. A prime spot as close to the lake as could be. But I’d already smiled at a lady who’d appeared from behind a tree, and those tables were not hers. She gestured ‘here, here’ and we allowed ourselves to be seated elsewhere. She then produced two very good iced coffees, seemingly from the building-site behind us, or the alleyway next to it. We could not tell, nor did we care.
Lunch and coffee, lake and a hazy sun. Fishermen dotted the shores. Past temples and tethered dogs, caged cockerels, youngsters licking ice-creams, street sellers and families huddled on green benches, we walked full circle back to Tran Quoc Pagoda, a stone’s throw from Truc Bach on West Lake.

The largest of the lakes at seventeen kilometres round, West Lake is an expat enclave, it’s Tay Ho district lined with restaurants, cafes, boutiques and ritzy hotels. Nothing for us.

We preferred the smaller lakes. At the B52 lake, Hun Tiep, there was just a small rusting piece of a downed B52 bomber, and plastic bags and bottles floating in murky green water. Hun Tiep was not even much of a lake. ‘Nothing but a dirty pond with a bit of rusting metal’ was the gist of reviews on Trip-Advisor.

There were two cafes, both named B52. We chose one and ordered a yogurt coffee and an avocado smoothie. And we sat. Women chatted and laughed. A man smoked a bamboo pipe. An old stooped woman shuffled down the street and sat and drank a cup of green tea and went back from where she came. I imagined her doing the same thing every afternoon. A kingfisher rested on the rusty metal of the bomber; dived for an insect and re-perched himself. It was a very peaceful place. We ordered a second round of drinks and we thought about the war and the men who’d been in the bomber and the people they were trying to bomb. It was far from being a miserable, oppressive place; it was a remnant, a reminder of a brutal but courageous past. The war is never far away in Vietnam, even in backwaters like Hun Tiep.

Practical Stuff.

Truc Bach.
Aummee Vegetarian Restaurant. 26, Chau Long. We ate here many times and never had a bad dish. Comfortable seating, great service, restful atmosphere and reasonable prices.

Bookworm. Chau Long street. Second hand book store with English books. Rather off-hand service. We nicknamed it the rude bookworm.

West Lake

Cafe Duy Tri – fantastic yogurt coffee in a family-run business that’s been going strong since 1936.