Every city has an alter ego after the sun goes down. When the stars come up and the lights start twinkling, the regular spots become unrecognisable, especially when you are on a vacation. One of my favourite activities while travelling is to revisit the popular spots at night, so as to be able to fully appreciate the difference.

We were in the capital city of Vietnam, Hanoi, for three nights. The first night, when we returned from Cat Ba island, I really wanted to explore the city. We were staying in the heart of the city and almost every major attraction was at a stone's throw distance.

However, most of them closes at 5 PM. Also, online I saw that the shows of Water puppet was available throughout the evening but in reality, it was not. When we scurried to the Thang Long theatre, all the shows were sold out and there wasn't any later in the night. The next two nights we weren't available, so that was out of question. We decided to take a leap of faith and hurry to the Lotus Water puppet theatre, another very famous place but that was sold out too. And the last show was at 6 30 PM. I was absolutely crestfallen. I had to accept that this was not happening.

Then we proceeded towards the next spot on our list: the Hoan Kiem Lake. It's a natural freshwater lake situated in heart of Hanoi, something which has a very strong historical significance. I won't go into those details but would only try to hover around its natural beauty. This lake used to be full of soft shell turtles centuries back and there is still one left.

There is the Huc bridge on the lake that leads to the Ngoc Soc Temple. The temple closes at 5 30 and we couldn't take the rest of the family members inside. Luckily we could explore the inner campus in a hurry. There is a turtle tower too, from the colonial times. The bottom-line of this travelogue is that this entire area lights up like magic at night and shouldn't be missed.

Of course there can't be any travel day without something glitchy. After we found the puppet theatre closed, we explored the Ngoc Soc Temple and then went back to our hotel to pick up our kids and my parents. Now the kids wanted to shop for toys so my husband decided to leave for the market with the elder one. Only my phone had internet plan, so he took it and asked me to meet at the lake with the rest of the crew.

I am not very good with directions and was scared at the bottom of my heart how to reach the lake with my elderly parents and my three year old. The locals couldn't speak English at all. However, we succeeded in navigating the market area to reach the designated side of the lake. After some time, the father daughter duo joined us.

We gorged on street food on the way back. It was such a simple yet a wholesome evening.

This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon 2024.