Speciality Shopping Streets in Hanoi Old Quarter – A Tale of Two Contrasting Towns

Well known with a weird sounding name "underwater street", Gia Ngu Street is situated in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. It is one of busiest streets in Hanoi linking Hang Dao with Hang Be known for its famous vehicular traffic due to the motorcycles backed on the sidewalk. The main merchandise which is underwear, socks and some types of children's clothes that is found aplenty in this street makes it exclusive. Any type of underwear ranging from different sizes, colours, styles can be bought here at quite low prices. You can buy most of these items that are of good quality here at less than USD 4.

This is one of the many criss-crossing streets that can be located in the Old Quarter and was once where a famous physician in Vietnam lived; this street has been named after him to honour his memory. It is said that he was specialised in traditional medicine, which is also a reason why you can find different types of herbs and medicine on Lan Ong Street. The smell of herbs is quite prominent and from a distance any tourist would be able to find the street with ease due to this reason.

This is a street popular for its fan making trade and spans a distance of about 200 metres running from Luong Van Can Street to Hang Non Street. Previously it used to be called Rue des Eventails at the time when the French occupied the territory. The street once used to have many shops that make fans from all sorts of material like bamboo, paper and palm leaves. It is sad to note that today, there are no shops selling fans in this street as the names suggests. Instead, it is replaced by all kind of religious items that are used in traditional rituals and kept in altars besides wooden handcrafted items that also can be found. Foreigners are known to get their self-designed wooden seals done here that can leave their personal seals on books as a special souvenir from Vietnam.

This street runs a distance of 250 metres linking Nguyen Thien Thuat with Luong Ngoc Quyen streets. It used to be called Lataste Giay during the French occupation time which means 'shoes' in Vietnamese. It used to be a busy street full of shoe makers from Cham village selling leather shoes and sandals in the bygone era. Hang Giay Street is not too far from many a serviced apartment Hanoi has to offer such as Somerset Hoa Binh Hanoi. Once again today, there isn't a single shop that sells shoes in this street. The owner of the land here demolished old houses and rebuilt modern two-storey houses that are now mostly rented for Chinese restaurants with some locals making and selling incense and candles in the middle of the street which is also quite a famous trade.