Tours in Hanoi

Start early, before the Old Quarter has fully woken up. The first thing you notice is sound: motorbikes finding their rhythm, a spoon tapping a bowl at a pho stall, plastic stools being dragged onto the pavement. Hanoi is a city best understood at street level, and the streets here are organised in a way that still shows. Whole lanes belong to one trade, and you walk from tin to silk to paper to herbs without much of a plan.

Sit by Hoan Kiem Lake at dawn and you will see the city's other face. Older residents do tai chi, others jog the loop, and badminton games spring up wherever there is flat ground. In the evening the crowd shifts to the streets around the lake, which are closed to traffic at the weekend and fill with families. Nearby, the Temple of Literature gives you a quiet courtyard to walk through, and Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum and the One Pillar Pagoda sit in a calmer, more formal part of town. Egg coffee, bun cha and a cold bia hoi on a corner are not optional.

Then leave. Some of the best days from Hanoi start by getting out of it. Head south-west and the traffic thins, the roads turn to rice fields, and you reach villages where red incense sticks are fanned out to dry in the open air, the colour so bright it looks painted onto the ground. Further on, a small boat carries you along a stream between karst hills to the Perfume Pagoda, where a walk through forest leads to a cave temple that people travel to as a pilgrimage. It is a slow, green, quiet counterweight to the capital.

If there is a Hanoi landmark you want to see that you cannot find listed here, such as a museum, a particular temple or a food street, ask. A local guide can build a day around it.