Hanoi hotels collection

Tax in Hanoi's Old Quarter was once reckoned by the width of the frontage: houses often have only a few paces of it, then stretch back beneath their tiled roofs, courtyard after courtyard, and are known as tube houses. At the Temple of Literature, the names of those who passed the mandarin examinations are carved on stone stelae, each one carried by a tortoise. On West Lake, at Quảng An, a pinch of green tea is slipped in the evening into the heart of the hundred-petalled lotus, the flower is closed again, and it is gathered at dawn.