Originally Post on the Forums by ldldjr
The nice thing about coming to Ha Noi is that there is a LOT to do here (I live here) and there are one to three day excursions you can do outside of Ha Noi.
Lots of museums in the city proper. (Go to the museum of Ethnology, even if you have no intterest in museums!) You can spend a couple of days walking around the old town, "windows shopping" and looking at the interesting things - historically different streets specialized in different items and some of that continues over to today. Lan Ong is a medicinal herbs/creatures street, one street is religious articles, etc. There are lots of shops, old buildings, etc. There are lots of pagodas, neighborhood shrines - many are open to the public, some are not.
You could do a day trip to Ha Long Bay - if you ever saw the film "Indochine" with Catherine Denuve, the part of the film with the limestone mountains in the sea was set in that location. You can do a two day trip to Sapa - overnight train ride to Lao Cai then a 2 hour bus ride to Sapa. Reverse to come back - Sapa is a really interesting place to visit, as well as the surrounding ethnic minority villages. Tour agencies can set that up for you here in Ha Noi.
There is a pottery village (Bat Trang) just outside of town - a short taxi ride away. They have been producing pottery for centuries.
There is a lot to do and see.
