Hanoi Old Quarter: One Day Before the Night Bus North

Almost everyone riding the Ha Giang Loop passes through here first, and most of them have one or two days to fill before a night bus.

That is a specific situation, and it is not what the guides are written for. They are written for someone spending a week in Hanoi. This is written for someone using it as a staging post, which is a different job with a different shopping list.

What is the Old Quarter, actually?

It is the old commercial core of Hanoi, north of Hoan Kiem lake and outside the walls of the former Imperial Citadel. Vietnamese calls it Phố cổ Hà Nội. It has been a district of craftsmen and traders for more than 500 years, and the thing that makes it navigable is that the streets are named after what was sold on them.

Roughly 36 of them, each historically a guild street. Hàng means merchandise, so the name is a shopping list:

• Hàng Bạc, silver. Still jewellers, and still where a lot of money changing happens.
• Hàng Gai, hemp, now silk and tailoring.
• Hàng Mã, paper goods. Votive offerings, lanterns, decorations, and the most photographed street in the quarter.
• Hàng Thiếc, tin. Still metalworkers, still loud.
• Hàng Chiếu, mats, and the practical end of things.

The trades have drifted. Some streets still do exactly what their name says, some sold their last mat decades ago, and a few now sell nothing but coffee to visitors. The name records the original, which is why it is a history lesson rather than a directory.

The buildings are worth understanding too, because they explain why everything feels like it is happening in a corridor. Frontage was taxed, so houses went backwards instead of sideways. The result is the tube house: a few metres wide and up to sixty metres deep, with a shop at the front, a courtyard in the middle and the family living behind and above. When you step into a café and find it opens into a courtyard three rooms back, that is the shape you are walking through.

Old Quarter or French Quarter?

People ask this constantly and the guides mostly answer by listing hotels. The difference is easy once you have seen both.

The Old Quarter. Pre-colonial, organically grown, streets that are narrow because they were made for handcarts. Dense, loud, cheap, and where almost all the budget accommodation and street food is. This is the Hanoi people mean when they describe Hanoi.

The French Quarter. Laid out under colonial rule, south and east of the lake. Wide boulevards, villas, the Opera House, the expensive hotels, tree cover, and noticeably fewer motorbikes on the pavement. Calmer, and to some people duller.

They are a ten-minute walk apart, with Hoan Kiem lake in between. If you are staying one night before a bus, stay in the Old Quarter, because the pickup points and the cheap food are there. Walk into the French Quarter in the afternoon if you want a break from the noise.

One thing worth knowing before you commit to a hotel here: the Old Quarter is loud until late and awake early. Karaoke, deliveries, and a rooster somewhere are all normal. A room at the back of a tube house costs less and sleeps better than one on the street, and the difference matters more than usual when you are catching a night bus the following evening on limited sleep.

What should you do with one day before the night bus?

Honest version: the Old Quarter rewards one full day and starts repeating itself after that. If you have three days in Hanoi before going north, spend one here and use the others elsewhere.

A day that works, in the order the city itself runs:

• Early. The quarter is at its best before eight. Markets are working rather than performing, the heat has not arrived, and pavement breakfast is the meal Hanoi is best at. Pho or banh cuon, sitting on a plastic stool, is not a tourist activity here.
• Mid-morning. Walk the guild streets deliberately rather than wandering. Pick four of the Hàng streets above and walk them end to end. It is the only way the district’s logic becomes visible.
• Afternoon. Heat. This is when the tube-house cafés earn their keep, or when you cross to the French Quarter and walk under trees.
• Evening. Beer corner if you want the loud version, a food street if you want the good version. If your bus is tonight, this is where the time goes.

Getting from here to Ha Giang is its own decision, with a real difference between the sleeper bus and the limousine van. Hanoi to Ha Giang covers the options, and sleeper buses in Vietnam covers what the night itself is like if you have never done one.

Buy these here, not in the mountains

This is the part written for you specifically, and it is the reason a day in the Old Quarter is worth planning rather than drifting through.

Ha Giang has shops. They are small, they stock what local people need, and they are not a gear market. Hanoi is where you fix anything missing, and the guild-street system tells you where to go.

• A warm layer. The single most underestimated item. The northern mountains are cold from December to February and cold at altitude at any time of year, and most people arrive packed for Southeast Asia. Buy a fleece or a windproof layer here.
• Dry bags. Cheap, everywhere in the backpacker streets, and worth more than a rain jacket. One for electronics, one for a change of clothes.
• A plastic poncho. Two dollars, sold on every corner, better than the technical jacket you brought. Vietnam’s rainy season explains why the local version wins.
• Gloves. Thin ones. Three days of wind on the back of a bike is what ruins hands, not cold.
• Cash. Change money here, at a bank or a licensed gold shop on Hàng Bạc, not in a mountain town. Vietnam currency and money covers rates and what the notes are worth.
• A local eSIM. Set it up before you leave the city, where you can fix it if it fails. Vietnam eSIM and SIM cards has the detail.

What not to buy here: a helmet. Your rental or your tour includes one, and carrying a helmet on a night bus to save nothing is a decision you will regret at 3am.

Is the Old Quarter safe, and what should you avoid?

It is safe in the way a busy city is safe. Violent crime against visitors is rare. The two things that actually cost people are traffic and money.

Traffic. There are effectively no gaps and the pavements are often full of parked motorbikes, so you will walk in the road. Cross at a constant slow pace and do not stop. Riders steer around something predictable.

The bill. Agree the price out loud before a cyclo ride, a shoe repair, a bag of fruit or anything handed to you. The overcharging here is opportunistic rather than organised, and it evaporates when you ask first.

Taxis at night. Use a ride-hailing app rather than a street taxi. The route and the driver are recorded, and the price is fixed before you get in.

The wider picture, including the two risks most guides skip entirely, is in is Vietnam safe.

Common questions

A note on scope. This article is written for someone using Hanoi as a staging post before going north, which is why it spends more words on what to buy than on what to photograph. If you are spending a week in the city, a general Hanoi guide will serve you better than this one. The photograph above is of Ha Giang, not Hanoi, and is captioned as such: this site’s photography is a first-party Ha Giang shoot, and dressing a mountain frame up as a city street would be exactly the sort of thing the rest of this site is written to avoid.