Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [258]
Dong Xuan and Long Bien Bridge
East of the mosque, the city’s largest covered market, Dong Xuan, occupies a whole block behind its original, 1889 facade. Its three storeys are dedicated to clothes and household goods, while fresh foodstuffs spill out into a bustling street market stacked with multicoloured mounds of vegetables. Head one block east again and you find two ramps taking bicycles and pedestrians up onto Long Bien Bridge, a road and rail bridge completed in 1902 and originally named after the then governor-general of Indochina, Paul Doumer. Until Chuong Duong Bridge was built in the 1980s, Long Bien was the Red River’s only bridge and therefore of immense strategic significance. During the American War this was one of Vietnam’s most heavily defended spots, which American bombs never managed to knock out completely. If you have time, take a bicycle ride across the 1700-metre span of iron lattice-work, but spare a thought for the maintenance staff: in the 1960s, perhaps the last time it was done, it took a hundred workers five years to repaint the bridge.
Hanoi and around | The City | The Old Quarter |
The Museum of Independence, To Tich and Hang Quat
Cutting back southwards, it was at 48 Hang Ngang that Ho Chi Minh drafted the Declaration of Independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945. The house where he lived for those heady months is now the Museum of Independence (Mon–Fri 8–11.30am & 2–4.30pm; free). A desultory exhibition downstairs shows yet more photos of Uncle Ho with beaming children, but it’s worth taking a look at the two first-floor rooms where he slept, wrote and debated, seemingly surrounded by oversized Western period furniture.
From here it’s only a couple of minutes’ walk down to Hoan Kiem Lake, passing through the traditional street market selling fresh meat, fish and vegetables under an improvised canopy of low-slung sacks that clogs the lanes just behind Cau Go. This southern edge of the Old Quarter, particularly Hang Gai, is where you’ll find the biggest concentration of silk and embroidery shops, but before leaving the old streets completely take a quick detour up To Tich, a short lane of wood-turners, souvenir shops and juice bars whisking up colourful fresh-fruit combinations, to walk among Hang Quat’s bright-red prayer flags.
Hanoi and around | The City |
The French Quarter
After the hectic streets of the Old Quarter, the grand boulevards and wide pavements of Hanoi’s French Quarter to the south and east of Hoan Kiem Lake are a welcome relief. Again it’s the architecture here that’s the highlight, with a few specific attractions spread over a couple of kilometres. The first French concession was granted in 1874, an insalubrious plot of land on the banks of the Red River, southeast of where the Opera House stands today. Once in full possession of Hanoi, after 1882, the French began to create a city appropriate to their new protectorate, starting with the area between the old concession and the train station, 2km to the west. Gradually elegant villas filled plots along the grid of tree-lined avenues, then spread south in the 1930s and 1940s towards what is now Thong Nhat (Reunification) Park, a peaceful but rather featureless expanse of green marking the French Quarter’s southern boundary.
Hanoi and around | The City | The French Quarter |
The Opera House
In the process of building their capital the French destroyed many ancient Vietnamese monuments, including one of Hanoi’s oldest pagodas, Bao Thien, which was demolished to make way for the cathedral. They were replaced, however, with some fine, Parisian-style buildings such as the stately Opera House (now officially known as the Municipal Theatre), near the eastern end of Trang Tien. Based on the neo-Baroque Paris Opéra, complete with Ionic columns and grey slate tiles imported from France, the theatre was erected on reclaimed land and finally opened in 1911 after ten years in the building. It was regarded as the jewel in the crown of French Hanoi, the colonial town’s physical and cultural