The Vietnamese nation was born among
the lagoons and marshes of the Red
River Delta around 4000 years ago
and for most of its independent
existence has been ruled from
HANOI
, Vietnam's small, elegant capital
lying in the heart of the northern
delta. Given the political and
historical importance of Hanoi and
its burgeoning population of one
million, it's a surprisingly low-key
city, with the character of a
provincial town - quite unlike
brash, young Ho Chi Minh City. It
still retains buildings from the
eleventh-century court of its
founding father King Ly Thai To,
most notably the
Temple of
Literature , and some of the
streets in the
Old Quarter
still trade in the same speciality
goods they dealt in 500 years ago.
In 1887, the French turned Hanoi
into the centre of government for
the entire Union of Indochina,
replacing ancient monuments with
grand colonial residences, many of
which survive today. Hanoi finally
became the capital of independent
Vietnam in 1954, with Ho Chi Minh
its first president:
Ho Chi
Minh's Mausoleum is now the
city's biggest crowd-puller. The
city sustained serious damage in the
American War, particularly the
infamous Christmas Bombing campaign
of 1972, much of it lucidly
chronicled in the
Army Museum
. Until recently, political
isolation together with lack of
resources preserved what was
essentially the city of the 1950s.
However, since the advent of tourism
in 1993, the city has seen an
explosion in traveller cafés,
mini-hotels and cybercafés. Indeed,
Hang Bac, one of the Old Quarter's
main drags which is home to a large
number of traveller hang-outs, is
starting to resemble a little piece
of Bangkok's Khao San Road in Hanoi.
The big question now is how much of
central Hanoi will survive the
onslaught of modernization.
