Hoàn Kiếm Lake

A pleasant park in the centre of town, an easy walk from anywhere in the Old Quarter. This is the locals' favorite leisure spot; especially during weekends, when the lakeside streets are closed to traffic and becomes a pedestrian-only area. A great place to watch people practising tai chi in the morning or to sit and read in the afternoon. At weekends the park becomes even more popular as the normally busy road around it is pedestrianised, and instead filled with children driving electric cars or riding hoverboards. Hoàn Kiếm means "returned sword", and the name comes from a legend in which King Lê Lợi was given a magical sword by the gods, which he used to drive out the invading Chinese. Later, while boating on the lake, he encountered a giant turtle, which grabbed the sword and carried it down to its depths, returning it to the gods from whom it had come. (You can see a version of the legend at the Water Puppet Theatre.) The giant soft-shell turtles, whom Vietnamese biologists assigned to a separate species, Rafetus leloii, resided in the lake until the early 21st century. One of them, who died in 1968, has been preserved by the wonders of taxidermy, and can be viewed in a glass box (sarcophagus?) in a pavilion adjacent to Ngọc Sơn Temple on the island in the lake.

• outdoors
• family

Price

Park is free; 30,000 dong admission to the island temple (玉山祠).