Since 2010, it has been 1000 years since King Ly Thai To built his own court at the foot of the Red River. At the time when a golden dragon flew in the sky, Thang Long (City of the Rising Dragon) became the nation's capital for a good 800 years. Then the French came and under their protectorate, they made the small provincial capital of Ha Noi (city at the bend of the river) became the governmental center for the entire Union of Indochina after 1887, and thus a colonial city. During World War II, the Japanese invaded, and finally, in the winter of 1972, the Americans flew their B-52 bombers over Hanoi.
If you still want to experience a beautiful, lively city, in whose streets no McDonald's, it can be a city where people seem to survive without supermarkets or cathedral-sized gas stations. Then you should visit Hanoi, and should do it soon. There you can experience how an Asian city has happily come to terms with its European heritage, and how humane and comfortable such a city feels when the international chain stores have not yet been allowed to make their have not yet been allowed to make their breaches. For Vietnam is now in the great world supermarket of the WTO. The World Trade Organization is already enforcing its rules in Vietnam. Hanoi is becoming more colorful at first sight but also different: colonized anew, but voluntarily this time. A thousand stories, they say, exist here, one for each year of city life. The walls the old city streets tell them, the old houses and the beautiful temples and pagodas, from the from their weathered roofs they rise like a haze.
Thus, Hanoi seems to be torn between the desire to conserve history and the the urge to be like others. Then again, it seems like a city that has seen and experienced everything. That has nowhere left to go and therefore is in no hurry to get there, a city in search of lost time.
