Tours and Experiences you loved in Hanoi

I very much enjoyed an afternoon spent with a young person from Hanoi Kids. It's a volunteer group (akin to Paris Greeters) that allows their students to practice English and help you to get oriented with a local. Our guide spoke excellent English and she was delightful. Though their tour offerings are different than when I was there, they do offer a food tour. I still dream about a noodle dish I ate while on our walk. https://hanoikids.org/

Thank you CL. That's a lovely idea.

I took a cooking class. I signed up a day or two in advance at the restaurant. There were 2 other women. First we went for a tour through a local market where the chef introduced us to unfamiliar veggies and answered questions. Then we went to her kitchen where we helped to prepared a full meal of typical Vietnamese dishes, which we then gorged on. I saw several restaurants that offered classes.

I took an excellent food tour in China (Xi’an) with Lost Plate. They also have tours in Hanoi:

https://lostplate.com/

We rode on the back of scooters for ours in Saigon. It was one of our best memories. We just booked it through airbnb experiences but Hanoi Kids gets great reviews.

Thanks Chani, renee, Chris. We're with a group in Saigon, but are flying up to Hanoi to visit on our own.

Full disclosure: my husband nixed the food tour idea because we will already have been in Cambodia and Vietnam for 11 days on a CroisiEurope Mekong ship where the food is excellent. So I appreciate hearing about these other experiences.

Not sure if hubby will like it, but I really appreciated rhe Women's Museum in Hanoi. Hanoi was my last stop after 6 weeks in 4 countries in SEAsia and I wished that Museum had been my first stop. It gave me a lot of insight.

Thanks Marie. He wants to go to the ethnography museum, so I could go to the Women's Museum at that time. Merci.

FWIW, Hanoi Kids also has a non-food city tour offering that includes the ethnography museum.

Another vote for doing a food tour with Hanoi Kids whilst in Hanoi.

The Backstreet Boys ( Backstreet motor bike tours) offer a very fun tour in Hanoi. The drivers were college kids who were safe and fun and we saw lots of different parts of Hanoi. Loved every minute of it and would highly recommend.

Experiences I loved in Hanoi:
1. Getting up early and going for a walk around Hoan Kiem Lake, watching folks exercising. (Don't be surprised if they invite you to join in)
2. Grabbing a little red stool and join the crowd for a bowl of pho at a sidewalk food stall
3. Water Puppet Theatre (except some old French dude would not stop taking video of the entire bleeping show)
4. Chilling over salt coffee.
5. Visiting Temple of Literature
6. Train Street (ridiculous tourist thing but it's just one of those things you need to experience)
7. Interacting with the friendly locals. (this was a theme everywhere in Vietnam)

my husband nixed the food tour idea because we will already have been in Cambodia and Vietnam for 11 days on a CroisiEurope Mekong ship

Fair enough, but I will mention that the real fun of the food tour was more about vibing the various locations and especially riding on the scooters. The food was good but it wasn't the main attraction.

Thanks Beth and Chris. These answers are great.