We had 2 nights in Hanoi at the Sofitel Metropole back in 2009 - a Friday night & Sunday night on either side of an overnight cruise onboard the Annam Junk in Ha Long Bay. The hotel itself & the staff were great however the city itself struck me as a police state & still felt very much like Communist North Vietnam.
We were walking down the street & a guy walking on the other side of the road towards us immediately crossed the road & approached us trying to sell us drugs. It happened a second time to SO when we were in an internet café & SO popped out to buy a can of drink at a nearby shop. One of the shops on a street corner was selling headstones for graves which I thought was downright creepy in the middle of the city.
We walked into one clothes shop but the sales assistance was too busy on the internet to even acknowledge the fact we were even in the stop.
As for the taxi back to the hotel, the cabbie didn't say a word the entire trip even when I queried whether he was taking us to the Metropole Hotel. We were driving down all these unfamiliar backstreets & I was convinced we were going the wrong way yet he didn't utter a word until we did get to the right hotel then with the taxi meter showing 290,000 dong he uttered in perfect English "just make it 300,000!" We paid him exactly as per what the meter said.
A lot of people say that Hanoi is heaps better than Saigon but I'd have to say I thought the opposite. We weren't there on a weekday so didn't have time to explore the museums however culture aside, I just didn't like the feel of the place & it's certainly a place a wouldn't feel safe wandering around at night alone whereas I felt the opposite in Saigon.
You can't have been that couple I once saw on TV who had 'holidayed' there 26 years in a row. :shock: