I think one of the best ways to experience a new city is to just go outside and walk around in a densely-populated area. I applied that philosophy during my trip to Hà Nội, Việt Nam by one day heading over to the Tây Hồ District, which translates to the West Lake District, and going for a leisurely stroll around the touristy area.

… It didn’t exactly stay leisurely, but at least it started pretty peacefully.

I started my day at Double B’s Specialty Coffee and Brunch. It is right on Hồ Tây, which translates to West Lake; here is the view of the lake from the restaurant.

While deciding what to eat, I ordered some of their “must-try” signature juice. The juice was very unique and unlike most juices in the United States. It wasn’t too sweet, which allowed the rich flavors of the fruits and vegetables come out. The flavor combination was also interesting and gave the beverage a multi-faceted element to it.

The banana bread was relatively mild compared to what I usually have in the United States, which I actually preferred. I often see banana bread made closer to being a thicker cake, but this banana bread at Double B’s was special in that the outside was denser and thicker like banana bread, but the center was much softer and more supple in texture.

I also sipped on some egg coffee. To be clear, this isn’t regular coffee with an egg cracked into it or anything; I believe the significance of the “egg” is closer to what eggnog would be, as this was a very rich, creamy, and custardy coffee.

This is what the front of the restaurant looked like. The idiot sitting on the bench in the covered patio started smoking a cigarette while I was eating, so although I enjoyed my brunch, I ended my meal with a horrific headache.

Afterwards, I started walking southwest on a pedestrian walkway in Phường Yên Hoa, which translates to the Peace Blossom Ward.

I approached Chùa Trấn Quốc, which translates to the Tran Quoc Pagoda; unfortunately, they appeared to be closed due to some parades and celebrations that were happening for Cách mạng tháng Tám và Quốc khánh nước Cộng hòa Xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam, which is the August Revolution and the National Day of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

I crossed over Đường Thanh Niên and took some more photographs of the buildings surrounding West Lake.

Đền Thủy Trung Tiên was also closed, but I managed to peek inside through the spaces in the door. I believe that name roughly translates to the Temple of the Fairy in the Middle of the Water.

I believe this was the Nhà Hàng Bánh Tôm Hồ Tây, which roughly translates to West Lake Shrimp Cake Restaurant. There was a dog randomly roaming around.

Here is Nhà Ga Thủy Phi Cơ Hồ Tây, or the West Lake Seaplane Terminal.

I eventually made my way over to Vườn hoa Mai Xuân Thưởng. In the center, there was a statue of Mai Xuân Thưởng, the man after whom the flower garden is named. He was known as a leader of Phong trào Cần Vương, a movement that roughly translates to “Support the King” which aimed to expel French colonial forces from Vietnam.

Here is the đài phun nước bông sen, or the lotus fountain, inside the aforementioned flower garden.

At this point, more and more roads were closing in preparation for the parade and celebration. I wanted to make my way back to my hotel soon, so I slowly started walking away from the busy area and tried to find a decent spot to get picked up by a Grab driver.

Unfortunately, the more I walked, the more I realized that the scope and breadth of the road closures was a lot greater than what I expected.

Comically, I would find a spot on my Grab app that was available for pick-up, so I would walk over there, but by the time I made it over to that location, the road closures had expanded even more and Grab no longer permitted pick-ups from that area anymore.

Eventually, after over five kilometers of walking, I made it far enough away from the busy area that I was able to call a Grab driver.

It obviously wasn’t the most pleasant experience having to trek a long distance in the heat and humidity, but I actually really enjoyed my walk through and around the West Lake District. It also made my shower feel extra refreshing after getting back to my hotel.

I feel like having all these road closures and celebration preparations greatly enhanced my day of sightseeing, and it allowed me to get a much more genuine and special Hanoi experience. I didn’t stick around for long enough to actually see the parade’s dress rehearsal or anything else that was happening that evening, but I did have an opportunity to see some helicopters flying overhead, presumably carrying some important government figures.

The scale of this parade seemed astronomically large. I’m glad I was lucky enough to have the timing line up with my trip, because I’m pretty sure I would not have been able to see anything quite like this in the United States.

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:

Visiting the Ba Đình District was one of the first tourist activites I did after arriving in Hà Nội, Việt Nam. It’s one of the most popular tourist areas in the city, and there was a lot to look at in a fairly condensed area, so I figured it would be a good place to start.

I already published a blog post a few days ago from seeing Bảo tàng Hồ Chí Minh, which translates to the Ho Chi Minh Museum, located inside the Ba Đình District. I gave that location a dedicated blog post because I had a lot of photographs from within the museum, but for everything else, I figured it would make the most sense doing a single Ba Đình round-up.

I believe this is Chùa Diên Hựu, which translates to the Dien Huu Temple.

On the opposite side of the walkway, there was this water featured labeled as đài phun nước, which translates to “fountain.” I’m not sure if it actually really is a fountain that was just turned off, or if it mislabeled, but it had an interesting rocky centerpiece to it.

This area had a little marketplace where people were selling apparel and other merchandise. I was getting thirsty, so I purchased a cold beverage from one of the stalls; I found it funny that they stocked Monster energy drinks there, so I got a Zero Sugar Ultra Paradise.

Afterwards, I looped around to Chùa Một Cột, which translates to the One Pillar Pagoda.

After enjoying looking at the temples, I came out into the sunlight and walked towards the gardens.

This is an interesting fountain I saw next to the offices of Ban Quản Lý Bảo Tàng Hồ Chí Minh, which translates to the Ho Chi Minh Museum Management Board.

Here is a photograph I took while standing on Hùng Vương Street facing south towards the intersection of Lê Hồng Phong Street.

The city was setting up for the 80th anniversary celebration of Cách mạng tháng Tám và Quốc khánh nước Cộng hòa Xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam (which translates to The August Revolution and the National Day of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam). There were extra bleachers being set up and signage being installed in preparation for the events.

I was able to see Lăng Chủ tịch Hồ Chí Minh, which is Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum. Apparently Ho Chi Minh’s body is on display here, but they are only open for tourists during certain hours, and I was a bit too late that day to be able to go inside.

Once in a while, the guards in front of the mausoleum will be swapped out. I managed to catch two new guards in the distance headed towards the mausoleum to relieve the current guards and take their place.

After finishing my exploring, I headed back towards the entrance/exit. On the way there, I saw the outside of Phê La Ngọc Hà, a coffee shop.

For my meal in the neighborhood, I had bún chả ăn kèm với rau sống, which was a highly-recommended famous dish in Vietnam. To my understanding, this roughly translates to “white rice vermicelli noodles and seasoned minced pork patties served with fresh herbs.”

And no, I do not know why my noodles look so radioactive in the picture…

Here are some more photographs I took around the neighborhood right outside the fenced tourism area:

This is probably very unsurprising to hear from someone who lives in Las Vegas, a city located in the Mojave Desert, but it is excruciatingly humid in Hanoi. My hotel feels fine when the air conditioning and dehumidifier are both running at full power, but stepping outside feels like it requires more effort even just to breathe because of how much moisture there is in the air.

One of the concerns I had prior to arriving in Vietnam was the pedestrian crosswalk situation, i.e., how vehicles don’t really stop for people and just drive around you. I might have just been lucky so far in only having needed to cross streets that aren’t too busy, but it’s been a lot easier than I expected. As long as you telegraph your movements clearly, remain at a consistent pace, and opt to use marked crosswalks where possible so that your motion is predictable, it seems like Vietnam’s traffic system sort of has it figured out.

In general, sightseeing has been very interesting so far. I’ve never seen temples like this before in-person, so it was nice being able to go inside one and experience it first-hand.