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Hanoi — A city where streets are named after what they sell
In the first two weeks of February 2024, I explored the capital city of Vietnam: Hanoi. One of the first things that caught my attention was a fun and unique feature of the city: many of the streets are named after the items of food you can find there. it’s a clever and practical system that makes getting around the city easier and more interesting.
For example, “Hang Gai” means “Silk Street,” and it’s full of shops selling silk products. Another street, “Hang Bac,” or “Silver Street,” is where you can find many jewelry stores. This tradition comes from Hanoi’s Old Quarter, where each street used to be dedicated to a specific trade. Today, the street names still reflect what you can buy there, which adds a lot of character to the city.
I found this fact both amusing and helpful. As someone who loves exploring new places on foot, it was like having a built-in guide. Even though I don’t speak Vietnamese, I could often figure out where to go just by reading the street names.
Learning Vietnamese was a real challenge for me. It’s a tonal language with a script that looks very different from anything I’ve seen before. To make things even harder, I quickly realized that English isn’t widely spoken in Hanoi. Instead, many locals seem to know Mandarin better, which makes sense given the region’s…
