(VOV) -No matter how far they may roam, rural people can never forget the image of their native village’s temple. The powerful symbol of community spirit is also an irreplaceable repository of local culture and traditions.

(VOV) - “Here’s the trail,” our guide said. He pointed up – at what appeared to be a sheer rock wall.

(VOV) - Mount Fansipan is only half as tall as Mount Everest. Yet this mountain, perched at the eastern edge of the Himalayan range in Vietnam’s uppermost Lao Cai province, is hardly an easy climb.

(VOV) -There are a lot of things that can give a city an undeniable character. Cities can take on an energy so idiosyncratic that it is beyond recognition.

(VOV) - Visiting a traditional craft village along the Red River banks is a good way of escaping the busy life of the capital city and exploring the age-old ceramic craft making.  

(VOV) - The Vietnamese idea of ‘về quê’ has a more complex meaning than may seem.

(VOV) - Although the Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday has passed, its festive atmosphere still pervades the city. Local residents in several districts of Hanoi treasure the tradition of celebrating a second Tet or “Tet lai”.

(VOV) -As a foreigner coming to Hanoi for the first time, I have spent a day locating a bicycle shop and haggling about the price, but found it not easy to get one.

(VOV) - Eva Lindskog, a Swedish sociologist, can speak Vietnamese as fluently as her mother tongue. She has actively engaged in sociology and poverty reduction projects for the benefit of Vietnamese people.

(VOV) - Vietnam is a peaceful nation of friendly and hospitable people in the eyes of many international friends living and working here.

(VOV) - The Lunar New Year (Tết) holiday can be a reality check for longer term foreign residents in Vietnam like me.

(VOV) - People’s definition of privacy says much about the culture they come from.

(VOV) - Hanoi is the land of noodles and dumplings in daunting variety. At least, that is what British visitor David Bobby had concluded local culinary after his three-week trip around the capital city.

(VOV) - The Old Quarter is such a hub for visitors to Hanoi that other districts of the city seem to get left behind in tourist literature that is available internationally.

(VOV) - As the scorching months of summer slid by, sticky and humid in the Center of Vietnam, I looked forward to cooler temperatures and the relief of the monsoon rains.

(VOV) - Every corner of Hanoi is filled with the atmosphere of Christmas celebrations, the cheer being carried along by not only local residents but also international friends for the first time in the cold holiday season.

(VOV) - One of the first questions Vietnamese people, especially men, ask a foreigner is ‘Can you eat dog meat?’ 

(VOV) - A traveler finds himself facing the pre-dawn streets of Hanoi after a long train ride south from Sapa. An experience to enjoy or not?

(VOV) - The Vietnamese Ao Dai has graced the world’s catwalks, acclaimed for its luxuriously elegant appearance as well as its softness and lightness.

(VOV) - With the fast approach of winter in town, most Hanoi lovers are seeking new places for snack food and their most iconic wintry dishes are nem chua ran (fried fermented pork), banh mi thit xien (grilled pork with toast), or banh chuoi (fried banana cake).

(VOV) -The way of making and drinking Lotus or Jasmine tea is the treasured custom of Vietnamese people. Every cup of natural flower-scented tea captures a fraction of Vietnam’s rich and vibrant culture.

(VOV) - Explaining the traffic in Vietnam is an unreasonable expectation if your audience has never experienced it. After all, how do you explain a skyscraper to a mole?

(VOV) - Despite having faced some initial difficulties since he first set foot in Vietnam, young Frenchman Stanislas Deffrennes now considers the S-shaped country an indispensable part of his life.

(VOV) - It’s no longer strange to see a Vietnamese man and a foreign woman walking hand in hand on the street. The obstacles their marriage normally encounters, however, are numerous.

(VOV) - In the eyes of Natalia Kraevskaia, a Russian woman who married a Vietnamese man, Hanoi is a beautiful, peaceful city that is worth her passionate devotion to the art gallery over the years.

(VOV) - Vietnam is well-known for its glorious thousand-year history of national construction and defence, and also for its attractive, friendly, and safe tourist sites.

(VOV) - Cyclos have become not only an inextricable part of Hanoi’s culture but also one of its “tourist attractions” for foreign visitors to the city.

Hanoi has been named one of the cheapest and best places to drink fresh beer in Asia by travel guides and journalists, thanks to its lively drinking culture.

This is a new land. Here sameness takes me home.

A romantic landscape of verdant, terraced rice fields stretches into the distance, but there’s nothing romantic for someone working knee-deep in mud, sweat running down their bodies and bent over so they see nothing but the soil in front of them.