Although those who know me well will have been able to easily guess which hotel that I, a Marriott loyalist, stayed at during my trip to Hà Nội, Việt Nam, I still didn’t want to “confirm” it on my blog until the end of my trip, considering that there was a lot of other stuff for me to post about anyway, and no matter how low the security risk might be, it’s still considered within best practices to not disclose your exact location.

Now that it is safer to do so, I can verify that I did indeed select the JW Marriott Hotel Hanoi for my time in Vietnam. I heard that they had a reputation for offering excellent service; considering that I am a foreigner who was traveling for the very first time to a country that does not speak English as their primary language, I figured I could take advantage of and lean on the hotel staff to help get me through my stay if anything were to come up. (Luckily, I didn’t have anything go wrong throughout my entire trip, but it was still good peace of mind to know that the staff was there to help whenever needed.)

The hotel overall was fantastic, and I especially appreciated the executive lounge where I was able to get free meals, snacks, beverages, and filtered water all day. Another thing I liked about the hotel was the Lakeside Gardens, a serene and well-manicured garden on the hotel property.

Here are some photographs I took in and around the Lakeside Gardens:

During my walk, I noticed that the staff brought out boxes of documents at some point and began throwing them into a fire pit. I suspect that this was their equivalent of when people shred confidential documents in the United States.

Within the gardens, there was a special section called the Herb Garden. I saw on the JW Marriott website that they had cooking classes that took place in the Herb Garden, with the curriculum focusing on different kinds of herbs and the roles they play in Vietnamese cuisine. I considered trying it but ended up never getting around to it because it was very rainy and humid most of the days of my stay, and on the sunnier days, I went off-property to be a tourist out in the city.

Here are some more photographs from in and around the Lakeside Gardens:

After walking all the paths of the Lakeside Gardens, I circled around to the front and side of the hotel.

This was the view that I had from my hotel room’s window; it overlooked the Lakeside Gardens, as well as the lake and a portion of the Hanoi skyline.

I figured this was also probably one of the most relevant blog posts for me to share pictures of my room as well. I just had a regular guest room, but it was very nice and exceeded the quality of many other hotels’ higher-end suites. It was very spacious, and the design was a nice balance of minimalistic simplicity and elegant comfort. My favorite part about it was the floor-to-ceiling windows, which allowed me to let in plenty of sunlight during the daytime and enjoy the sparkling city lights during the night.

The pricing during my stay was surprisingly affordable—around US$150.00 per night on average. It was still very expensive relative to Vietnam’s cost of living, but if you compare it to hotel prices in the United States, $150 a night is basically just a regular hotel, and high-end resorts under Marriott’s luxury brands (like the JW, Ritz-Carlton, and St. Regis) will be at least several hundred (if not over a thousand) dollars per night.

Overall, the JW Marriott Hotel Hanoi fulfilled everything I could have possibly wanted from my lodging in Vietnam. It was a tranquil retreat away from the bustling city, and it had enough amenities that someone could theoretically never leave the property and have plenty of food and activities to last them an entire two-week vacation.

In case you missed it from my previous blog posts, I spent a day of my trip in Hà Nội, Việt Nam exploring the Vincom Mega Mall Royal City, an underground shopping and entertainment complex.

I’ve been having a tough time dealing with the high heat and intense humidity in Hanoi, which is a starkly different than what I’m used to back home in Las Vegas. The heat itself is mostly fine, but when coupled with the humidity, I feel like my body isn’t able to properly cool itself down and it ultimately translates into physical exhaustion. Because of this, I’ve been trying to seek out indoor tourist activities, and the Mega Mall seemed like a great place to see a lot of stuff all at once in a single area.

Over the past few days, I’ve shared my thoughts about and photographs from the Baby Elephant Animal Park, Vincom Center for Contemporary Art, and HLC Starry Sky Art Museum, all found in units inside the Mega Mall. Obviously, the Mega Mall has much more than that, but nothing else seemed to warrant its own dedicated blog post. I still wanted to share what I saw elsewhere in the mall though, so I figured a reasonable way to do that would be to do a round-up post of all my miscellaneous Mega Mall photographs.

I actually enjoyed my time walking around the Mega Mall quite a bit. The sheer number of different things inside the mall, in addition to the very wide breadth of what was available to look at, was actually quite surprising. I was aware that Vietnam is not quite at the level of economic development as the United States, but you would never know that from looking at the Mega Mall. The inside was very nice and technologically advanced, and it was air conditioned (which is apparently not always a common thing in Vietnamese buildings).

Another thing I found unexpected was the number of flags. In the United States, you’ll see some places have a large United States flag or two by the entrance or hanging on the wall. In the Mega Mall, there were literally a total of thousands of miniature flags—both the national flag of Vietnam and the flag of the Communist Party of Vietnam—hanging in pretty much every other store. I thought the United States was pretty patriotic, but I guess Vietnam has got us beaten there.

Another thing I liked about the Mega Mall at Royal City was the fact that it basically created a little campus with the high-rise apartment buildings. With the Mega Mall having an absolutely gargantuan WinMart, being a resident of Royal City seemed like it would be pretty convenient. The courtyard area seemed to also double as an event venue, considering that I saw some light construction going on that appeared to be associated with an upcoming convention of some sort.

Here are some photographs I captured around Royal City, starting with the apartment buildings outdoors, then of some visually interesting spots inside the complex:

For one of my tourist activites while in Hà Nội, Việt Nam, I visited the Vincom Mega Mall Royal City, an underground shopping and entertainment complex, to spend a day getting away from the heat and humidity outdoors.

Over the past few days, I already shared some photographs I took of the Baby Elephant Animal Park and the Vincom Center for Contemporary Art, two attractions located inside the Mega Mall. My next batch of photos is from the HLC Starry Sky Art Museum.

This reminded me of a less-developed version of the Arte Museum Las Vegas that I visited earlier this year. There wasn’t really anything interactive at the HLC Starry Sky Museum, and most importantly, there was a lack of scent integration, which was my favorite part of the Arte Museum. Instead, HLC basically just relied entirely on lights and visuals. With that being said, Vietnam has lower economic development than the United States, so within that context, I still think the HLC was not too bad.

I don’t remember how much it cost for admission because they accepted cash only, so my co-worker who I went with was the one who paid for both of our tickets. On top of that, I have been having currency conversion issues in my head this entire trip so far because of how significantly different the currency denominations are and how much higher buying power the United States dollar has over the Vietnamese đồng. With that being said, I do recall that it felt a little bit expensive relative to other comparably similar attractions, especially considering the somewhat short length of the HLC experience.

Here are some photographs I took while walking through the various rooms of the museum:

For one of my tourist activities while in Hà Nội, Việt Nam, I visited the Vincom Mega Mall Royal City.

A couple days ago, I posted some photographs from Vườn thú Chú Voi Con, which is the Baby Elephant Animal Park. While still at the Mega Mall, I also stopped by Trung tâm Nghệ thuật đương đại Vincom, which translates to the Vincom Center for Contemporary Art.

It seemed like the general theme of this gallery was taking plastics and other waste products and transforming them into sculptures and other three-dimensional art pieces. I don’t have a particularly sophisticated comprehension of art theory, so I sometimes get bored in art museums that display only paintings; I liked the Vincom Center for Contemporary Art because it felt like I was able to appreciate both the visuals as well as the underlying message of the art without needing to have a deep initial background understanding on the topic.

Here are some photographs I took around the art gallery:

The heat alone in Hà Nội, Việt Nam during my trip hasn’t been too much of an issue, but paired together with the insanely high humidity, going outside has been an uncomfortbale experience for me. Because of this, I’ve been trying to find tourist activities that involve staying indoors, preferably in areas with air conditioning.

One of the spots I found was the Vincom Mega Mall Royal City, an underground shopping and entertainment complex. I scouted out a few museums inside the complex that I wanted to visit ahead of time online, but while walking around, I came across Vườn thú Chú Voi Con, which translates to the Baby Elephant Animal Park. I peeked inside and saw a bunch of animals in the format of a petting zoo, so I figured I would make a spontaneous stop to check it out.

This was very fun. I had an opportunity to get closer to some of these animals than I have ever been before, and got to pet some of them for the first time, such as the alpaca and sheep.

With that being said, this is probably the most unethical zoo I have ever seen in my entire life. The two alpaca and the sheep were confined together as a group of three in a pen that seemed too small to even accommodate one of them. A lot of the animals looked malnourished. Some of them looked like they were infected with something, or at the very least, extremely unclean. There were no attendants carefully supervising the petting areas, so there were children in the animal park that had free reign to yank at animals’ limbs and otherwise inflict distress on them.

In a vacuum, I enjoyed my time here, and it was very amusing seeing a bunch of farm animals inside an underground shopping center. However, I cannot fully recommend visiting the Baby Elephant Animal Park. If you’re not too concerned about the morals and ethics aspect of zoo animals, that is fine, but it is personally conflicting having this fun activity in the Mega Mall but also not wanting to encourage supporting their business model of making profit at the expense of what seemed to me like animals that weren’t really having a nice life.

The animal park had glass that allowed passersby in the mall to look in, so that is one alternative if you want to check it out but don’t want to purchase an admission ticket.

Here are some photographs I took of the animals during my visit: