WORDS ON THE STREET 70th anniversary of Hanoi's Liberation Day Vietnam - Asia 2023 Smart City Summit Hanoi celebrates 15 years of administrative boundary adjustment 12th Vietnam-France decentrialized cooperation conference 31st Sea Games - Vietnam 2021 Covid-19 Pandemic
Jan 09, 2017 / 14:15

Hanoi's Old Quarter attracts tourists by the friendliness

The Dong Lac Communal House has been recognised by the Hanoi Tourism Department as a new tourist destination in the Old Quarter.

Located at 38 Hang Dao Street, the communal house worships the ancestors of the brassiere trading in the 16th century. After many ups and downs through its history, the house was damaged seriously. In 2000, the vestige was renovated with the financial and technical assistance of Toulouse city in France.
 
Craftsmen are performing the sophisticated steps in making lacquer in Dong Lac Communal House
Craftsmen are performing the sophisticated steps in making lacquer in Dong Lac Communal House
In 2004, the communal house was recognised by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism as a national vestige. Aiming to introduce to tourists to Vietnamese traditional handicraft, a cultural space has been set up within the two-storey building, displaying refined products such as lacquer, giay do (poonah), lanh My A (My A black silk), and embroidery. In addition, all the staff working at the venue have been trained as tourist guides for the venue.

From January, the Hanoi Culture Space will launch monthly cultural series with an aim to revive traditional values of the local culture. The kick-off, held on January 13, will be a roundtable discussion with painter and antique collector Nguyen Manh Duc, who will talk about the Lunar New Year altar of Vietnamese people and prayers made during the traditional festival. Other events will be held on the second Friday of every month.

Recently, Hanoi is striving to increase earnings from tourism by attracting tourists with generous spending and keeping them stay longer, while developing additional tourism products and infrastructure serving the sector. The city will focus on tourism promotion in promising markets of Western Europe, Northeastern Asia and Northern America.

The old town’s night market is also a specialty of the city connected with walking street. Night Market is held from 18h to 23h in the evening of Friday, Saturday and Sunday with a length of nearly 3km through old houses, starting from Hang Dao Street to Dong Xuan market gate. The night market makes the old quarter crowded, noisy and more boisterous. Everywhere here also sees buyers, sellers, from jewelry, handicrafts to handmade pretty small electronic devices, home appliances, to the familiar dishes of Hanoi. 

​Once deployed, Pedestrian Street becomes a favourite meeting place of Hanoians when assembling into a wide variety of traditional art from modern to ancient drum dance, dragon dance, chau van singing to modern dance, with the participation of the masses if you feel interested. This is also a favorite spot of the young people living in Hanoi to create space so that they can show off their talents, gathered and an ideal location for group meetings. Besides, joining a pedestrian street, the young, children can participate in familiar folk games such tugging, catching each other, paint ingmask and so on.