Everything published on Access Hanoi, newest first — the everyday mechanics of visiting the city, section by section.
Vietnamese dong notes are polymer, not paper, and two of the most commonly handled — the 20,000 and the 500,000 — are printed in the same blue family. The gap between them is twenty-five times. Mixing them up is not a rounding error. It is handing over roughly 480,000 dong more than you meant to, … Read more
Hanoi does not have one bus station for leaving the city. It has four, on different edges of town, and each one roughly matches a compass direction. That rule holds for most destinations. It breaks down for a handful of specific places — Ninh Binh, Sapa, Ha Long and Mong Cai among them — where … Read more
A sleeper bus berth is not a bed. It is a molded, reclining pod set at a fixed angle. Two decks run the length of the coach, three columns wide. Expect roughly 1.7 to 1.8 meters of length and about 50 centimeters of width, narrower still in the back row, where the wheel arch cuts … Read more
Answering the question first Hanoi has one main line station, but the name on your ticket may not match the pin on your map. Typing “Hanoi Station” into Google Maps or a Grab pickup often lands on Long Bien Station, a separate building across the Red River from Ga Hanoi on Le Duan Street. Get … Read more
Getting from Noi Bai to the Old Quarter comes down to three real options — a metered taxi, a GrabCar booked through the app, or the public airport bus — plus one non-option: the metro, which never reaches the airport at all. The right choice depends less on which is cheapest than on when you … Read more
A metered taxi in Hanoi should show a running fare from the moment the car pulls away, calculated by distance and time. A cyclo has no meter at all. Its price is whatever the rider agrees before getting in. Confusing the two, or trusting the wrong livery, is where visitors lose money. How a taxi … Read more
Hanoi has two working metro lines. Neither one reaches the Old Quarter, Hoan Kiem (Hoàn Kiếm) Lake or Noi Bai (Nội Bài) Airport. They were built to connect outer districts to the center, not to serve visitor sights, so for most itineraries a metro ride adds a transfer rather than replacing one. This article goes … Read more
GrabCar is a private car booked through the app, priced and matched like a metered taxi. GrabBike is a motorbike taxi, ridden pillion, that can filter through traffic and reach places a car cannot. The right choice in Hanoi often has nothing to do with comfort or cost — it comes down to whether the … Read more
Step off the kerb, walk at a slow and even pace, and do not stop. Motorbikes read your speed and steer around where you will be, not where you are standing. That single habit gets a visitor across most Hanoi streets. It does not work everywhere, and this page is about the streets where it … Read more
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