TravelFrame Vietnam
Insights
Articles on food, spirituality, craft villages and the hidden corners of Hanoi we love to share.
Old Quarter Corners
A working post office since 1901 that still smells like paper and glue, tucked on the lake's northeast corner — a strange, quiet survivor of colonial Hanoi that people walk past without looking up.
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Ba Dinh's Quiet Rules
A solemn, heavily guarded granite monument in Ba Dinh Square where Ho Chi Minh's embalmed body lies in state — visited under strict rules that are worth knowing before you queue.
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The almond tree remembers
The French colonial prison later nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by American POWs — a heavy, necessary visit with a guillotine, an escape tunnel replica, and one very old tree in the courtyard.
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Across the Red Bridge
A jade-green islet reached by a vermillion wooden bridge, home to a giant taxidermied turtle and a stone pen tower pointed at the sky — Hanoi's most photographed short walk.
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Ten Minutes, One Dream
A single stone column holding up a wooden shrine shaped like a lotus blossom — Hanoi's smallest famous building, built on the strength of an 11th-century emperor's dream.
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The Northern Guardian
A thousand-year-old Taoist temple on the edge of West Lake, home to a four-ton bronze statue that's outlived every dynasty since it was cast. Quiet, cheap to enter, and easy to combine with a lake walk.
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The City's Back Garden
A flower garden tucked along the Red River dyke in Tây Hồ, where sunflowers, chrysanthemums, and rotating seasonal blooms turn a strip of riverbank into Hanoi's most photographed backdrop.
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Greece, By Way of Hoàng Mai
A blue-and-white photo studio park beside Yên Sở Park in southern Hanoi, built to look like Santorini — an unapologetically artificial, genuinely fun stop for a specific kind of photo.
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Gothic afternoon
Soot-blackened stone, twin bell towers, and stained glass shipped from France in 1886 — Hanoi's answer to Notre-Dame, best seen from a cafe balcony across the street.
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