Our visit to Hanoi in October 2016 was the first stop in a 2-month trip around Southeast Asia. To be perfect honest, the decision to include the city in our itinerary was largely a result of Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport being a convenient stepping off point into the region that we could reach on the dates we wanted to travel using frequent flyer miles.

We were happy to be back staying at the Charming 2 Hotel in the Old Quarter, our favorite part of the city. While there had been some turnover in staff since our last visit; Ernie, the hotel manager was still there and we were treated like old friends. 

We love the color and intimacy of the Old Quarter where we always can find something to do. 

Most of our activities from this visit including a couple food oriented walking tours are described on our Hanoi Restaurants 2016 page but one additional note would be in order. We helped recover from the long flight from The States with a 60-minute Dead Sea Salt body scrub plus a 60-minute Vietnamese full body massage at the SF Spa Hanoi at a total cost of VDN 1, 100,000 or less than $50 USD.

The SF Spa was a 5-minute walk from the hotel and featured a clean & beautiful interior décor and very friendly, ethical service. In fact, we enjoyed our visit so much that when we had a couple hours to kill after lunch on our day of departure, we headed back for another treatment before our late afternoon flight.