Shopping in Hanoi Vietnam

Hanoi is one of my absolute favorite places to shop. The silk is wonderful and there is a whole street of so called Silk Shops. Real Vietnamese silk is really a mix of silk and rayon and I love the shimmer and patterns. While I love to wander around the "Silk Street" looking in the shops I usually do my serious silk shopping at the huge market on the north end of the Old Quarter. This is a cavernous place replacing a former market which burned in 1994. Its for the locals and you don't run into many tourists here. One of the shops has a huge collection of iridescent silks. Yum.

On weekends one of the long streets in the Old Quarter closes to traffic and is set up as a shopping street/market.

Its fun to wander around looking for something unusual and smelling the wonderful street food.

Luckily I timed this trip to miss the Tet holiday. The entire country closes down for several days after buying all sorts of neat stuff to celebrate with.