About - Access Hanoi

Tạ Hiện street in the Old Quarter — ochre shophouses down both sides, red Vietnamese flags hanging overhead, and women in white áo dài walking between them — Photograph by Pixabay user 9636137, Wikimedia Commons, CC0

Access Hanoi is a practical guide to one city, written around the mechanics rather than the highlights: how to cross the road, what the notes are worth, which morning a place is shut, and what the walk between two things actually costs you in time.

It exists because the questions that decide whether a trip to Hanoi goes well are almost never the ones a highlights list answers. Nobody’s day is ruined by choosing the wrong pagoda. Days are ruined by arriving at the mausoleum in the afternoon, by handing over a 500,000 note for a bowl of phở, and by standing at a kerb for ten minutes waiting for a gap that is not coming.

Hang Gai street with shopfronts and overhead cables — Photograph by Gary Todd from Xinzheng, China, Wikimedia Commons, CC0

How it is written

Every page describes a mechanism rather than quoting a figure. Vietnamese admissions are small and are revised; fares differ between operators on the same route; entry rules have changed repeatedly. So this site tells you what is free, what is ticketed, what has a dress code and what closes on a day you would not expect — and sends you to the operator for the number.

⛔ Nothing here is invented. No prices, fares, opening times or entry rules are written from memory or filled in to look complete. Where something is uncertain it says so, and where a rule changes often it says that too.

⚠️ How this site is made

Access Hanoi is written and maintained with the assistance of AI, edited and fact-checked before publication. Photographs are from Wikimedia Commons, used under their licences and credited individually on the page they appear on.

Some links on this site are affiliate links: if you book through one, this site may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. ⛔ No sight page or ranking on this site carries an affiliate link, and no recommendation here is influenced by whether a partner pays.

The corridor of stone stelae carried on tortoises, listing the doctors of the old examinations — Photograph by Daderot, Wikimedia Commons, CC0

Corrections

Corrections are the most useful thing you can send. If a closing day has moved, a museum now needs booking, or a street has changed, please say so.

A bowl of phở bò with lime and chilli, photographed in Hanoi — Photograph by Codename5281, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Checked on 7 September 2026.