A New Generation Must Bridge Hanoi’s Past to Its Tourism Future
Photo Caption: Young Vietnamese zoom by on the famous Long Biên Bridge in Hanoi via motorbike. Photographer: David April
Skift Take
Hanoi's economy is improving considerably, and tourism is growing, but for Vietnam's capital city to best position itself to develop as a responsible tourism destination, a change in mindset must occur. And that change needs to come from the young Vietnamese of today.
I fell in love with Hanoi’s cafe culture right away, and it wasn’t just because I’m a New Yorker addicted to coffee.
Hanoi’s cozy and unique cafes were typically filled with teenagers and millennials hanging out at all hours of the day. One of my favorite things to do in the capital city of Vietnam was to sip an iced coconut coffee (the French may have brought coffee to Vietnam, but the Vietnamese perfected the drink in the form of iced coconut coffees, egg coffees, and Vietnamese coffees) in an adorable cafe, Xofa, and people watch over the top of my laptop screen. I’d watch teenage couples cozy up to one another as if they were doing something rebellious no one else had ever done before. I’d observe millennials studying intently and wonder for what they were preparing. I’d see friends laughing over some story being told in Vietnamese that I couldn’t understand.
While I tried to imagine their life stories, what their upbringings were like, and what they hoped to
