WELCOME TO VIETNAM!

In the spring 1010, Emperor Ly Thai To founded his capital, which he figured ‘Rising Dragon’, on the banks of the Red river. Almost a thousand year later, Hanoi remains Vietnam’s political centre with its crowded streets lined with reminders of its long and tumultuous history, a both gracious but growing city. You’ll find the Temple of Literature, a bastion of Confucian scholarship founded in 1070, an Old Quarter of winding alleys, traditional shop-houses and crowded markets; tree-lined avenues flanked by imposing French colonial villas and the Soviet-style mausoleum built in honor of the man who led the country to independence, Ho Chi Minh.