Hanoi

Bun Cha Huong Lien

The table Obama and Anthony Bourdain ate at in 2016 is upstairs under glass. Locals will tell you the bun cha is better elsewhere, and they are often right.

Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

Behind the main building is a park of full-scale traditional houses you can walk inside, including a 42-metre Ede longhouse and a Bahnar communal house with a roof like a blade.

Hoa Lo Prison Relic

The surviving wing of the French colonial prison, with the guillotine yard, the shackled communal cells and the section on the American pilots held here.

Vietnamese Women's Museum

Four floors on women as mothers, warriors, traders and artisans, with a regional dress gallery and a strong section on street vendors that most museums here would not bother with.

Hanoi Old Quarter

Streets still named for the trade that occupied them, and several still doing it: votive paper on one, festival flags and religious goods on another, silver since the fifteenth century on a third.

Hoan Kiem Walking Street

From Friday evening the roads around the lake close to traffic and fill with buskers, food carts and groups playing traditional street games including o an quan and stilt-walking.

Banh cuon stalls, Old Quarter

Rice batter ladled onto a steaming cloth, lifted off in a single translucent sheet and rolled around pork and wood ear. Traced to a village on the river now recognised as a craft village for it.

Pho shops, Old Quarter

The northern bowl is spare on purpose: clear broth, flat noodles, spring onion, and none of the basil, bean sprouts and hoisin the southern version piles on.

Truc Bach Lake

Separated from West Lake by a causeway, and the one residents sit around in the evening while everyone else is circling the central lake.

Temple of Literature (Van Mieu - Quoc Tu Giam)

A separately ticketed evening programme that lights the courtyards and projects onto the pavilions, with far fewer people in them than by day.