Hanoi

The lakeside path belongs to the exercise groups early in the morning. From Friday evening to Sunday night the lake roads close to cars. Over the red Huc bridge a giant softshell turtle from the lake lies in a glass case. The last one alive died in 2016.

You walk in the road, because motorbikes have the pavement. Street names are the goods once sold there, Hang Bac silver, Hang Ma paper offerings, Hang Thiec tin, and some still do. Houses run about 3m wide and deep back, since tax went by frontage.

It shuts Mondays and Fridays and opens mornings only otherwise. You queue outside; inside, no talking and no camera, and bare shoulders or knees are turned back. For about two months each year the body goes for preservation and only the square is open.

82 stelae on stone tortoises list the men who passed the exams from 1442 to 1779. Rubbing a tortoise head was said to bring luck and wore it down, so a rail keeps hands off. In May and June the courtyards fill with students in ao dai being photographed.

In the D67 bunker underground the 1960s telephones and maps sit as they were left, and the war was run from that room. Under a glass floor in the yard you can see foundations stacked by one dynasty after another. It was listed as World Heritage in 2010.

The French built this prison in 1896 for Vietnamese political prisoners. A guillotine still stands in the yard, and the sewer inmates escaped through in 1945 is left open. The rooms that held American pilots are a small part; most covers the decades before.

The pagoda was on the Red River bank until the bank gave way and it was moved to this West Lake islet in 1615. Every tier of the red stupa has a niche with a Buddha in it, and the bodhi tree grew from a cutting sent by India in 1959. A causeway walks you in.

The bridge opened in 1902, and the spans do not match because bombed sections were replaced with whatever was to hand. Only trains, motorbikes and people cross it now, the traffic keeps to the left, and on the sandbank underneath there are banana fields.

The iron-framed market burnt down in 1994 and was rebuilt; it went up in 1889. Mornings are wholesale, with handcarts of boxes blocking the aisles and cloth on the upper floors, and five minutes east stands the one surviving gate of the old city wall.

The stage is waist-deep water, and the puppeteers stand in it behind a bamboo screen working the figures on long poles. The game started in flooded paddy in the Red River delta, a band with a dan bau plays at the side, and the front rows get splashed.

A tiny shrine perched on one stone column rising out of a pond, first raised under the Ly dynasty in 1049. Withdrawing French troops wrecked it in 1954 and it was rebuilt the following year. It sits right behind the mausoleum, steps from its exit.

Clothing and tools of all 54 of Vietnam's ethnic groups, roughly a 30-minute ride west of the Old Quarter. Full-size houses stand rebuilt in the garden, chief among them a Bahnar communal house with a blade-tall roof and an Ede longhouse. Closed on Mondays.

Built by the French in 1886 on the model of Notre-Dame de Paris, its grey walls still streaked by weather. Lemon tea stalls with plastic stools ring the square outside. Sipping one while the facade goes dark is how young Hanoians spend their evenings.

Hanoi's largest lake, which plenty of people circle by bicycle. In June and July lotus blooms along the Quang Ba shore and photographers come at dawn with models in ao dai. The northern shore gathers cafes and a neighbourhood where many foreigners live.

A theatre modelled on the Palais Garnier, completed in 1911 at the end of Trang Tien street. The interior is open only to ticket holders or on scheduled guided tours. In the August Revolution of 1945, speeches to the crowd were made from its balcony.

Four floors on the lives of Vietnamese women, from weddings and childbirth to war and street vending. Standouts are the minority wedding costumes and filmed interviews with vendors who carry shoulder poles. Hoan Kiem Lake lies a 10-minute walk to the north.

A converted French-era boarding school facing the rear wall of the Temple of Literature. Lacquer and silk paintings fill much of it, and a wooden Kwan Yin with dozens of arms is the star piece. It pairs easily with the temple in one outing.

Wreckage of a B-52 shot down in the December 1972 bombing still juts upside down from a little pond among houses. It hides in a Ngoc Ha alley, so navigate by map, and residents hang their laundry along the edge. Seeing it costs nothing.

A Taoist temple where West Lake meets Truc Bach, devoted to Tran Vu, guardian of the north. Its black bronze deity dates from a 17th-century casting. Being close to the causeway for Tran Quoc Pagoda, it is usually seen together with it.

A small temple on Hang Buom street, counted as the oldest in the Old Quarter. The name recalls a legendary white horse said to have shown the king where to build the city walls. A life-size red-lacquered horse stands inside.

A ceramic mosaic wall pieced together along the Red River dike in 2010 for Hanoi's thousandth birthday. Roughly 4km long, it entered Guinness as the world's longest ceramic mosaic. Traffic never lets up beside it, so keep to the pavement side on foot.

Temples and caves on a pilgrim trail in hills southwest of Hanoi. A rowed sampan works up the Yen stream for about an hour, then you climb or take a cable car to Huong Tich cave. From the first lunar month the festival brings long waits just for a boat.

A village at Son Tay, west of Hanoi, where walls and houses of red laterite line every lane. People still live here, and an open door can mean an invitation in for tea. Families sell the local peanut brittle and soy sauce on their doorsteps.

A pottery village around 40 minutes by car southeast, across the Red River. Hundreds of shops crowd its ceramics market, and visitors can throw a lump of clay on the wheel and then paint the piece. Firing takes some days, so check it against your stay.

A Ha Dong village in southwest Hanoi, weaving silk, by its own account, for close to ten centuries. Silk shops flank the main road and looms still clatter down side lanes. Identical cloth carries different prices in each shop, so compare a few.