- What may be the oldest, extant colonial French building in Hanoi is at the south end of Hoan Kiem Lake, not far from my hotel. Check out the date noted in bas-relief - 1886 - at 3 Hang Khay Street.
- Ho Chi Minh arrived in Hanoi for the first time in 1945 when he was in his mid-50s. He lived in a house at 48 Hang Ngang Street in the city’sOld Quarter.
Also in Hoan Kiem Lake, the Tortoise Tower was built by a wealthy 19th Century businessman as a burial site for his parents. But Hanoians didn’t agree that such a public spot should memorialise just one family. The businessman buried his parents elsewhere.
- Hoa Lo Prison where U.S. Senator John McCain whiled away years during the war was opened in 1899 after the colonial French razed a pottery village. Hoa Lo means pottery kilns. The Americans knew the prison as the Hanoi Hilton.
- The One Pillar Pagoda at Ba Dinh Square is a replica of the original, which the French razed when they abandoned Vietnam in the 1950s.
- During Vietnam’s war with the United States, curators at the Temple of Literature buried the monumental turtles and the stelae that contain the names of 1,306 doctor laureates. Why? So the bombs wouldn’t destroy them.
- Here’s a spot-on description of Hanoi in winter, written by Robert Templer in his book Shadows and Wind: “In January and February, Hanoi looks like the set of a damp film noir, all furtiveness and smoky shadows with a soundtrack of slowly turning cyclo wheels.” I love the comparison to film noir, but Templer wrote those words back in the late 1990s. Cyclos no longer dominate the roads as they did then.
Almost a century after it served as a filming location for ‘Miss Suwanna of Siam’, one of Thailand’s first motion pictures, this storied seaside resort is getting set to draw the curtains back on the inaugural 
Seems I can’t open a magazine these days, or browse a news Web site that hasn’t cataloged the Top 5 This or the Top Five That. It’s as if media the world over have decided we can’t bother reading stuff that’s not bulleted or otherwise numbered in terms of priority. I can’t say I mind this trend. And thus I’m prepared to talk a bit here about the top five attractions, and why I like them, along Dong Khoi Street, which runs by one side of the Caravelle Hotel’s old wing.